On Monday, PayPal introduced the PayPal Ads ID—a deterministic advertising identifier built upon verified PayPal and Venmo accounts. With this move, the payments giant is directly challenging identification systems based on cookies and device fingerprinting, which have long served as the foundation of digital advertising.

A Commercial Alternative to Cookies

The new identifier is based on more than 25 billion transactions across over 400 million PayPal and Venmo accounts, according to a company press release. Unlike probabilistic identifiers that rely on cookies, device fingerprints, or IP addresses, the PayPal Ads ID is verified at the moment of purchase, ensuring its stability across different browsers, devices, and sessions.

"Identity is at the core of all aspects of advertising. For too long, this foundation has relied on guesswork," said Mark Grether, Senior Vice President and General Manager of PayPal Ads. "With the PayPal Ads ID, when your identification system is built on confirmed commercial relationships, you are no longer making assumptions about who is in front of you—you are interacting with your audience with confidence."

The company cited industry data showing that only 21% of brands are fully confident in their ability to accurately identify and reach their target audience across various digital platforms. PayPal claims its identifier solves three long-standing problems: low match rates during ad activation, fragmented tracking across different devices, and the inability to link ad exposure to real purchases through closed-loop attribution.

Launch Partners and Privacy Safeguards

The PayPal Ads ID is launching with four technology partners—Magnite, PubMatic, Rokt, and Taboola—who will implement the identifier across the open web, connected TV (CTV), and native advertising environments. The company is providing the identifier to commercial partners for free, expecting that widespread adoption will stimulate growth in retail media spending rather than generating direct revenue per use.

Privacy protection measures include individual encryption, aggregation, and de-identification of each identifier. PayPal stated that it does not disclose the identities of merchants or transaction details to advertisers or ad-tech partners, and users can manage their participation through opt-out settings.

PayPal’s Growing Advertising Ambitions

This launch is the latest step in an advertising strategy that PayPal has been building since 2024. The company’s transaction graph, covering approximately 30 million merchants worldwide, gives it the ability to track purchasing behavior across a multitude of retail points—something individual retailer media networks cannot replicate. PayPal Ads has already attracted advertisers such as Mercedes-Benz, Uber, DoorDash, and Walmart, and has expanded its off-site display and video advertising offerings to the UK and German markets. According to industry estimates cited by The Current, spending on off-site retail media advertising is projected to reach $17 billion in 2026 and grow to $25.6 billion by 2029.