PayPal names two VPs to drive new ad platform development
PayPal Holdings Inc. is expanding its executive suite as it embarks on a program to launch an advertising platform.
The digital commerce provider has named Mark Grether as senior VP, GM, PayPal Ads and John Anderson as senior VP, GM, consumer group. Both executives are starting with the company as of Tuesday, May 28, 2024 and report to Diego Scotti, executive VP, GM, consumer group and global marketing & communications.
The advertising business will include the PayPal advanced offers platform, which will use unique customer insights to build a dynamic, personalized advanced offers platform reaching customers based on what they have bought across the internet, down to the SKU and the individual product.
Grether has been an executive in the advertising industry for more than 20 years. He joins PayPal from Uber, where he was VP, GM of Uber advertising. Under his leadership, Uber advertising grew to a $1 billion business with more than 500,000 advertisers globally.
Prior to Uber, Grether led the product strategy for Amazon's advertising business, and he served as CEO of Sizmek, a global independent advertising platform purchased by Amazon in 2019. Prior to Sizmek, he was the co-founder and global COO of WPP's Xaxis, which became a leading programmatic media company.
"Commerce and advertising are deeply connected, and we believe that the advertising platform we are building at PayPal will become a must-use marketing channel for merchants big and small," said Scotti. "I'm thrilled to have Mark join our team and lead this important work."
Anderson will be accountable for PayPal's consumer business, including product strategy for PayPal and Venmo globally. He joins PayPal from financial services company Plaid, where he was head of product and payments and oversaw significant growth of Plaid's payment product suite.
Prior to Plaid, John spent a decade at Meta in numerous product and leadership roles, including head of product for Oculus, head of Facebook Japan, and head of product and operations teams for payments, commerce, and risk. Prior to joining Meta, John founded GroupCard, a social greeting and payments platform that was acquired by InComm.
"John brings strong experience in developing groundbreaking, personalized consumer experiences to PayPal, which will drive relevance of our brands, fuel our innovation pipeline, and give more reasons for consumers and merchants to choose PayPal," said Scotti.