PayPal Brings New Commerce-Grade Identity Solution to Advertising Industry

PayPal Ads ID provides deterministic identity from verified PayPal and Venmo accounts, making it available to ad tech partners to improve ad relevance and performance

SAN JOSE, Calif., April 27, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Most identity solutions in advertising are built on estimates, guesswork, or probabilistic signals. Today, PayPal changes that by introducing something different: PayPal Ads ID, an advertising identifier grounded in verified commerce relationships.

The digital advertising industry has long struggled with a foundational identity problem. According to the 2025 State of the Industry report, only 21% of brands, agencies, and publishers say they are very confident that they can accurately identify and reach their target audiences across digital channels. Cookies crumble across browsers. Device IDs fragment across platforms. IP addresses are unstable by design. They rotate, they're shared across households, and they often identify a single device rather than a user. Inferred signals degrade at the moment they are needed most: activation.

PayPal Ads ID is built to solve that. Unlike other identity solutions, PayPal Ads ID constructs aggregated, consented signals from browsing behavior and across the PayPal ecosystem. These are the same accounts consumers use when they actually spend money with PayPal or Venmo. Because it is verified at the point of purchase, PayPal Ads ID is deterministic rather than probabilistic, and consistent across browsers, devices, and sessions. Signal quality does not erode across environments because it is rooted in authenticated accounts rather than cookie pools.

"Identity is the foundation everything else in advertising is built on. For too long, that foundation has been guesswork," said Mark Grether, SVP & GM, PayPal Ads. "PayPal Ads ID changes that. When your identity layer is built on verified commerce relationships, you're no longer estimating who someone is, you're reaching them with confidence. That is the PayPal Transaction Graph at work."

Built on real purchasing data, PayPal Ads ID enables advertisers to:

• Reach more of their audience: Most identity solutions lose efficacy at the point of activation. Match rates drop and fill rates shrink causing advertisers to constantly update their audience profiles. Because PayPal Ads ID is built on more than 25B transactions across 400M+ PayPal and Venmo accounts, this identifier helps improve match rates and reach consistency to drive greater return on advertising spend.
• Recognize the same audiences everywhere: As consumers use more devices to search, browse, and buy, cookie and device-based IDs are challenged to maintain authority. PayPal Ads ID connects commerce-grade identity with money movement, with frequency of PayPal and Venmo app touchpoints, resulting in lower loss or wasted frequency.
• True closed-loop attribution: Other identifiers estimate whether an ad drove a purchase. With PayPal Ads ID, the identity layer and the transaction layer are aligned, enabling advertisers to measure true outcomes.

The PayPal Transaction Graph aggregates commerce and engagement signals across how people search, share, and shop by bringing together the power of PayPal and Venmo. Understanding the consumer's shopping and buying journey across tens of millions of merchants provides a key differentiator that allows advertisers a view of the consumer that is grounded in commerce reality at every stage.

PayPal Ads ID is designed with privacy in mind. The identifier is individually encrypted,  aggregated, and deidentified to protect user privacy, merchant names and transaction details as PayPal does not share that information. Additionally, consumers have clear, easy-to-use controls to manage their participation in PayPal Ads ID. Advertisers and ad tech partners gain the signal quality of commerce-grade identity without access to the underlying sensitive data.

PayPal Ads ID launches with an inaugural set of key technology partners that have agreed to test the solution including Magnite, PubMatic, Rokt, and Taboola, integrating PayPal Ads ID across commerce, open web, CTV, and native environments. These integrations will help advertisers gain access to an identity signal rooted in verified commerce relationships, designed to deliver more consistent cross-device accuracy, stronger match rates, and attribution grounded in purchase outcomes.

About PayPal
PayPal has been revolutionizing commerce globally for more than 25 years. Creating innovative experiences that make moving money, selling, and shopping simple, personalized, and secure, PayPal empowers consumers and businesses in approximately 200 markets to join and thrive in the global economy. For more information, visit paypal.com.

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SOURCE PayPal Holdings, Inc.