New Effective Display Advertising Channel: Online Bank Statements

You knew it had to happen.  The online banking industry is sitting on top of a mountain of specific customer data, including purchase histories.  It's a veritable gold mine for marketers - it was only a matter of time before the online banks of the world began considering the online bank statement as ripe for advertising.  Thus is a new display ad channel born.

McDonalds, Macy's and American Express are only some of the clients running display campaigns in this new way. The enabler is a company called Cardlytics - and they've already reached half a million people with a hundred or so campaigns according to Natalize Zmuda's piece in Advertising Age:

It may seem intrusive, but Cardlytics, the company behind the program, claims that advertisers, consumers and financial institutions are fast embracing this new advertising model. So far, major marketers such as McDonald's, Macy's and Staples have signed on with Cardlytics, while half a dozen financial institutions have implemented the service and are touting it as a rewards program for their customers.

In all, Cardlytics, a privately held company that officially launched the program last November, says it has run more than 100 marketing campaigns reaching nearly half a million customers. By the end of the summer, the company expects to have 50 to 70 financial institutions on board, reaching some 10 million customers by the end of the year.

"It's a whole new channel," said Hans Thiesen, chief revenue officer. "It eliminates so much waste. I don't care whether it's digital, TV or print. You're not guessing about who your audience is. I can guarantee you're reaching a fast-food customer or apparel shopper or moviegoer."

Mr. Thiesen can guarantee that because Cardlytics is privy to transaction data: the name of the merchant, date of the purchase, how much was spent and the customer's ZIP code. But it does not have access to personally identifiable data like customer names, account numbers or home addresses, which are managed by participating banks. Because of that, he downplays privacy concerns, noting that Cardlytics goes through "lots and lots" of regulatory steps in order to work with financial institutions. Customer information remains behind the bank's firewall.

Read the full piece here