Commerce Media: Guides, Comparisons and Tools

Commerce media connects first-party purchase, booking or transaction data with advertising and measurement. Start with the network directory, compare business models, then test the economics.

Start with the business decision and the data flow. Identify who owns the customer relationship, who receives each signal, who runs the decisioning system, and what evidence supports the result. A vendor feature list alone cannot settle those questions.

This guide brings together the reference material for this topic. Comparisons describe different operating models, rather than declaring a universal winner. The linked pages retain source dates, vendor-claim labels and the limits of each example. Read those limits before applying a figure or architecture to your own organization.

• Status. Live means the network sells media today. Pending means announced but not closed or not selling. Building means hiring or stated plans with no product. Platform means a third party that operates inside owners' properties rather than an owner-run network. Defunct means closed.
• Data. The first-party signal the network is built on. "Transactions" means card or wallet payment data across merchants. "Loyalty" means a membership scheme with in-store and online purchases. "Bookings" means travel reservations.
• Formats. Onsite = owner's app, site or email. Offsite = open web, social, CTV through the owner's audiences. Screens = physical screens the owner controls (seatback, in-room, fuel pump, in-store).
• Sales model. Self-serve (an ads manager), managed (sold by the owner's team), via partner (sold or executed by a named third party).
• Measurement. Closed-loop means the network can tie an exposure to a purchase it observes itself. "Offers" means card-linked offers where the merchant pays only on redemption, which is closed-loop by construction.
• Scale figure. Only figures with a public, dated source. "n/d" means not disclosed in any source we could find.

Read the full commerce media network examples: 2026 non-retail directory guide for context, sources and limitations.

• Visa. Visa Advertising Solutions and the Visa Commerce Network appear in Visa's FY2016 10-K as merchant offer products (Visa 10-K, FY2016). We found no 2025–2026 media network launch. Watchlist.
• Capital One, Chime, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, US Bank, Monzo, Starling, NatWest, Lloyds, N26, bunq. No owner-run network found. Several participate through Cardlytics or Kard.
• Hilton, Hyatt, IHG, Accor, Lufthansa Group, Air France-KLM, Ryanair, easyJet. No first-party-data media network found. Eurowings publishes a 2026 advertising media kit, which is conventional inflight ad sales rather than a data network (Eurowings Media Kit 2026).
• Instacart, Amazon, grocery and general retailers. Retail media; see the retail media hub.
• Nubank, CommBank, Grab, PhonePe and other non-US/EU networks. Out of geographic scope for this edition.

Read the full commerce media network examples: 2026 non-retail directory guide for context, sources and limitations.

The only audited financial media revenue line is Klarna's $180 million for 2024 (Payments Dive, 19 March 2025); banks report merchant spend driven instead, such as Chase's $11.2 billion in 2025 (chase.com, accessed 17 October 2026). eMarketer's forecast path implies the category passes $1 billion during 2026 and heads toward $3.15 billion in 2028 (eMarketer, January 2026). The 2027 question is which model carries the growth: offers (Chase, Mastercard, Citi), onsite media (Klarna, Amex Ads) or offsite (PayPal). The models are compared in Financial media networks explained. Our reading: offers carry volume because they need no new consent, onsite carries revenue where a shopping surface exists, and offsite stays a PayPal-shaped exception until clean-room activation is standard.

Mastercard's stated roadmap is distribution into point of sale and digital wallets (Marketing Dive, 1 October 2025). If it lands in 2027, an offer becomes visible at the terminal or in the wallet at the moment of payment rather than in a bank app beforehand, which changes measurement (exposure and purchase collapse into one event) and raises the consent question in the EU, where the EDPB separates PSD2 contractual consent from GDPR consent for marketing (EDPB Guidelines 06/2020). Visa has no comparable media product in the public record as of October 2026. For issuers, the practical consequence is that the card network becomes a distribution partner competing with the bank's own channel; the architecture for keeping decisioning in-house while renting distribution is in How a bank can launch a media network without moving customer data.

Read the full commerce media 2027: what changes outside retail (forecast) guide for context, sources and limitations.

A retailer sees every item in a basket but only in its own stores. A card issuer sees every merchant a customer pays but rarely the items. A payments wallet sits in between: it sees merchants across the web and, through browser extensions and shopping tabs, some products. That shapes what each can sell. Transaction data is best at answering "who buys from competitors", "who has stopped buying", and "who spends in a category", which is why the first products every bank launched were card-linked offers aimed at new-customer acquisition, not sponsored products. See Shopper data monetization for the retail version of this trade-off.

Two constraints follow. First, the data is regulated: in the US the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act and Regulation P restrict sharing nonpublic personal information with non-affiliated third parties unless the customer has had notice and a chance to opt out, with an exception for service providers and joint marketing under a contract that limits use (12 CFR 1016.10; 12 CFR 1016.13). In the EU, PSD2 and GDPR require a separate lawful basis for using payment data beyond the payment service (EDPB Guidelines 06/2020). Second, card numbers themselves are in PCI DSS scope, so every network works on tokenized or categorized transactions, never on the primary account number. The detailed rules are in GLBA and advertising with bank data.

Read the full financial media networks explained: examples and models guide for context, sources and limitations.

Public numbers are few, so treat the table as the complete set of disclosed figures rather than a benchmark.

Read the full financial media networks explained: examples and models guide for context, sources and limitations.

Data depth versus breadth. A retailer sees the item but only in its stores. A card issuer sees the merchant across the whole wallet but not the item. A travel company sees intent and timing months ahead of a purchase. This is why retail sells sponsored products, financial media sells offers and competitor-conquest audiences, and travel sells destination and trip-moment placements. The retail side of this is covered in Retail media network platforms compared; the financial side in Financial media networks explained.

Measurement. Retail media has a published standard: the IAB/MRC Retail Media Measurement Guidelines, final in January 2024 (IAB, January 2024), explained in Retail media measurement standards explained. Financial media has no equivalent; card-linked offers are closed-loop because the purchase is the billing event, while offsite audiences rely on the owner's purchase graph and modelled attribution. Travel media reports bookings the owner processes and uses brand lift for the rest.

Consent and law. Retail media runs on loyalty terms and, for offsite, opt-outs. Financial media sits under GLBA and Regulation P in the US and under GDPR and PSD2 in the EU, which is why every live bank network keeps transaction records inside the bank and exports only segments and reports. Telecom media is bounded by CPNI in the US and ePrivacy in the EU. Pharmacy networks exclude prescription data under HIPAA and state health-privacy laws. The compliance detail is in the ad tech compliance hub.

Read the full commerce media vs retail media vs financial media explained guide for context, sources and limitations.

A bank media network has three boundaries that an auditor will test. Drawing them first makes every later decision easier.

Boundary 1: the cardholder data environment. The primary account number, expiry and authentication data live here under PCI DSS. Nothing in the media stack should touch them. Transactions reach the media stack as tokenized events with merchant, category, amount, date and a customer token. If the media stack can reverse the token, it is in PCI scope.

Boundary 2: the bank's data perimeter. Nonpublic personal information, in GLBA terms, includes any information a consumer provides to get a financial product and any information from a transaction (12 CFR 1016.10). Audience building, offer matching and purchase measurement happen inside this perimeter. The question for every component is whether it needs records or only counts.

Boundary 3: the advertiser interface. Advertisers and agencies see audience sizes, offer placements, campaign reports and, where overlap analysis is wanted, a clean room. They never see records. United states that "advertisers cannot access the personally identifiable information" of its customers and that segments are "aggregated and anonymized" (United, 7 June 2024); Marriott calls its platform "consent-based, with easy opt-out options" (Hospitality Net, 12 June 2025). A bank should be able to make the same two statements on day one.

Read the full how to build a financial media network without moving data guide for context, sources and limitations.

The zones map to components a bank already has (core, consent, CRM) and components it must add (audience engine, offer engine, onsite decisioning, bidder, clean room, measurement). What differs from a retail stack is the strictness of the B–E boundary and the absence of a shared pixel or customer file. For how retailers do the same with loyalty data, see Shopper data monetization; for the clean room options, see Clean room architectures compared.

Read the full how to build a financial media network without moving data guide for context, sources and limitations.

The template is one sheet of inputs, one sheet of monthly steady-state formulas, one sheet of annual P&L with a ramp, and one sheet of sensitivity. Everything flows from audience to inventory to price to cost.

Audience. You start with total customers or members, the share that is monthly active, and the share that is addressable after consent and legal exclusions. For a bank the exclusions follow GLBA and the opt-out model the big networks use; for a pharmacy they follow HIPAA and state health-data laws, which remove prescription and health-adjacent purchases from the addressable base. The compliance hub has the frameworks; how a bank launches a media network without moving customer data walks through the consent architecture.

Offers. Card-linked and loyalty offers are the revenue line that every non-retail network starts with, because the purchase is the billing event. The model multiplies addressable users by offer views per user per month, applies a redemption rate, multiplies by average basket to get merchant spend driven, then applies the advertiser fee. Fees can be a share of the sale or a fixed cost per redemption. Consumer incentives (cash back, miles, coupon value) come off the top, then any partner share if the network runs inside someone else's channel.

Onsite placements. App and web impressions are sessions times ad impressions per session times the monetizable share, times fill. Pricing is CPM or, for sponsored listings, CTR times CPC.

Owned screens. Seatback, in-store, lobby and fuel-pump screens are modelled as screens times plays per day times opportunity-to-see per play, times sell-through, times CPM. The IAB and IAB Europe in-store measurement standard (finalized December 2024) is the reference for what counts as an impression (Pygmalios, updated 28 July 2026, citing the IAB standard).

Read the full commerce media business case template: 3-year p&l model guide for context, sources and limitations.

All monthly figures are steady state. Annual figures apply the ramp.

Read the full commerce media business case template: 3-year p&l model guide for context, sources and limitations.

Monthly steady state

Annual P&L

Unit economics and sanity checks

Read the full commerce media business case template: 3-year p&l model guide for context, sources and limitations.

What is the difference between commerce media and retail media? Retail media is advertising sold by retailers on their own data and properties. Commerce media is the broader category that also includes travel, financial services, telecom, delivery and mobility companies doing the same thing with transaction, loyalty or booking data. The IAB formalised this in its July 2025 explainer, and IAB Europe in its March 2025 definitions (IAB, July 2025; IAB Europe, 26 March 2025). Retail media remains the largest and most mature segment.

What is a financial media network? A financial media network is a commerce media network run by a bank, card network, payments company, BNPL provider or wallet, built on transaction data. eMarketer's definition covers ads on financial-services sites and apps plus ads bought through those companies' networks or DSPs using their first-party data, and it forecast US spend of $680 million in 2025 rising to $3.15 billion in 2028 (eMarketer, State of Financial Media Networks 2026). Chase Media Solutions, PayPal Ads, Klarna, Mastercard Commerce Media and Amex Ads are the live US examples; Revolut and Zilch are the UK examples.

Which airlines have media networks? As of October 2026, United (Kinective Media, June 2024) is the only airline with an owner-run network, and JetBlue sells its in-flight media through Kinective since June 2025. Delta has hired a leader for a media network but has not launched. American, Virgin Atlantic and ten other carriers sell in-flight media through Viasat's multi-airline network rather than their own (APEX, March 2025). We found no European airline with a first-party-data network.

How do these networks measure results without an online checkout? Three ways. Card-linked offers settle on redemption, so the purchase is the billing event. Loyalty networks match exposed members to in-store purchases on the loyalty card, and use clean rooms with publishers such as Pinterest or Reddit to extend that match offsite. Booking and mobility networks count bookings or orders they process themselves and use brand-lift studies for awareness campaigns. What none of them can do is observe a purchase that happens outside their own estate without a clean-room match, which is the main reason conversion claims from offsite products should be read carefully.

Can a bank or telco legally run a media network in the EU and US? Yes, within limits that shape the product. In the US, GLBA restricts sharing of non-public personal information by financial institutions, PCI DSS governs card data, CPNI restricts carriers' use of network information, and HIPAA plus state laws such as Washington's My Health My Data Act restrict health data. In the EU and UK, GDPR, ePrivacy and PECR require a lawful basis and, for most offsite use, consent. The networks in this directory handle this by keeping identifiers inside the owner's environment, selling aggregated segments or offers rather than records, and routing any cross-party matching through a clean room. See Data sovereignty defines the future of ad tech and our data sovereignty hub.

• Commerce Media Network Examples: 2026 Non-Retail Directory: Every bank, fintech, airline, hotel, telco, pharmacy and c-store commerce media network in the US, UK and EU: data, formats, sources. Updated quarterly.
• Commerce Media 2027: What Changes Outside Retail (Forecast): What is scheduled, forecast or speculative for commerce media in 2027 outside retail: financial, travel, telecom and mobility networks, with sources.
• Financial Media Networks Explained: Examples and Models: How Chase, PayPal, Klarna, Mastercard and Amex sell ads on transaction data without selling the data: four models, who pays, how it is measured.

• Commerce Media vs Retail Media vs Financial Media Explained: Commerce media is the umbrella; retail media and financial media are subsets. Definitions from IAB and eMarketer, a comparison table and examples.
• How to Build a Financial Media Network Without Moving Data: A launch guide for banks: keep transactions inside your perimeter, export only segments and reports. Architecture, GLBA and PCI DSS steps, checklist.

• Commerce Media Business Case Template: 3-Year P&L Model: Free 3-year P&L template for a bank, airline or pharmacy media network: every formula, sourced defaults, sensitivity table. XLSX and Google Sheets.

1. Visa 10-K, FY2016
2. Eurowings Media Kit 2026
3. Payments Dive, 19 March 2025
4. chase.com, accessed 17 October 2026
5. eMarketer, January 2026
6. Marketing Dive, 1 October 2025
7. EDPB Guidelines 06/2020
8. 12 CFR 1016.10
9. 12 CFR 1016.13
10. IAB, January 2024
11. United, 7 June 2024
12. Hospitality Net, 12 June 2025
13. Pygmalios, updated 28 July 2026

• October 18, 2026: aligned the search title and heading, expanded the source-linked guide and reviewed its page groups.
• October 17, 2026: assembled this guide from the approved reference pages, retaining their source links and limitations.