Everything we know about Chase’s retail media network

Another company is jumping on the retail media bandwagon.

Earlier this month, Chase announced the creation of a new business within the company called Chase Media Solutions, which will help advertisers target Chase customers based on their shopping habits.

This isn’t entirely new: Chase has been in the business of retail media for at least five years, since it introduced Chase Offers in 2018, a program that lets advertisers offer cashback and discounts to Chase customers, in-app or online. But Chase Offers had previously been handled entirely by a third party, Cardlytics.

With Chase Media Solutions, the company is getting more directly involved, and Chase will soon handle the targeting on its own. (That’s due in part to the company’s 2022 acquisition of the card-linked offers company Figg.)

Because it’ll no longer rely on a third party to serve and target ads, Chase will be able to offer more granular targeting to advertisers, Rich Muhlstock, president of Chase Media Solutions, told Marketing Brew. (Cardlytics will continue to help Chase “bring advertisers onboard,” he said.)

“We provide a certain level of detail to a third party where, if it’s in our own walls, we can actually give a more detailed view of who the consumer is to target, but more importantly, we can better personalize the offers,” he said.

The targeted offers will run in Chase’s mobile app and website, which, according to the company, has a digital audience of 63 million.

Chase will share customer interest in merchant categories with advertisers for targeting purposes, but won’t reveal customer interest in specific brands, Muhlstock said. Chase will give advertisers the ability to offer Chase customers cash-back deals and discounts, and advertisers will only be charged “if a customer sees an offer and makes a purchase,” he said.

“Our goal is to provide value to our customers,” Muhlstock said.

The “everything is an ad network” category is booming: Retail media is projected to be a $166 billion industry by 2025, and is expected to account for about 20% of all digital media spend this year, according to eMarketer. Companies including Uber, The Home Depot, and Target have all branched out into advertising to capitalize on their customer bases.

Chase’s offering varies a bit from more traditional retail media offerings, but its data has the potential to be compelling to brands in the DTC space and other sectors, like airline brands, Michelle Dooley, founder of Catalyst Media Consulting, told Marketing Brew.

“Because they’ve built a path to connect it back to measurement and performance, and you only pay when the customer clicks through on their site, I think that there is something valuable about that,” Dooley said. “But it’s different than the way that retail media has built it, based on SKU data.”

The perhaps natural evolution for retail media companies is to begin using customer data to help advertisers target audiences outside of their own websites and platforms; some retailers are already taking this approach. For now, Chase isn’t, Muhlstock said, but, “there are a lot of things in the cards.”