Key Takeaways Mastercard launches commerce media network leveraging 160 billion annual transactions and 500 million enrolled cardholders to deliver targeted advertising. Meta will begin mining AI chat...
Mastercard unveiled Mastercard Commerce Media on October 1, a digital advertising network that draws on insights from more than 160 billion transactions processed in 2024 to connect advertisers with 500 million enrolled consumers.
The platform currently delivers up to 22 times return on ad spend for advertisers across categories, including retail, travel, entertainment, and dining.
"We understand how to connect advertisers to consumers and consumers to the products, services, and experiences they value," said Craig Vosburg, chief services officer at Mastercard. "Mastercard Commerce Media is a natural extension of the trusted connections we're known for and the work we already do across our unique suite of services."
The launch reflects growing interest from payment processors in the advertising sector. PayPal launched its media business a year ago, hiring Mark Grether, former leader of Amazon Ads.
The appeal for advertisers is clear: while individual retailers possess rich data about their own customers, credit card companies like Mastercard can track consumer behavior across multiple merchants, providing a more comprehensive view of purchasing patterns.
Mastercard has established strategic partnerships with Citi, WPP, American Airlines, and Microsoft to expand the network's ecosystem.
The company is also partnering with Microsoft to enable Mastercard Commerce Media in Copilot Studio as artificial intelligence-driven commerce advances.
In a separate development raising privacy concerns, Meta announced on Wednesday that data collected from user interactions with its AI products will soon be used to sell targeted ads across Facebook and Instagram, with the company updating its privacy policy by December 16.
The new policy applies globally, except for users in South Korea, the United Kingdom, and the European Union, where privacy laws prevent this type of data collection.
Meta says more than a billion people chat with Meta AI every month, and it's common for users to hold long, detailed conversations with the AI chatbot.
Meta spokesperson Emil Vazquez confirmed that the privacy update extends beyond Meta AI to the company's other AI offerings, meaning Meta may use data from AI features in its Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses, including voice recordings, pictures, and videos analyzed with AI, to further target its ad products.
In a briefing with reporters, Meta privacy policy manager Christy Harris said the company is still in the process of building out systems that will use AI interactions to improve its ad products.
However, Meta says user conversations with AI around sensitive topics, including religious views, sexual orientation, political views, health, racial or ethnic origin, philosophical beliefs, or trade union membership, will not be used to show them ads.
Meta has confirmed there is no way for users to opt out of sharing data with the company's AI products.
At The Washington Post, Johanna Mayer-Jones, the executive tasked with helming the paper's ad business, has been weighing her future at the publication, raising the prospect of another high-profile departure at a precarious moment.
Mayer-Jones was elevated to the pivotal role of chief advertising officer in July 2023 by then-interim chief executive Patty Stonesifer and was tasked with stabilizing a division under immense pressure.
According to media outlet Status, Mayer-Jones has explored other roles and was recently a finalist for CNN's top ad sales position.
The development comes as the newspaper faces multiple challenges. After owner Jeff Bezos spiked the paper's endorsement of former Vice President Kamala Harris, the company lost 250,000 digital subscribers—10% of its total.
Print circulation has plummeted to 97,000 newspapers per day on average, according to the Alliance for Audited Media—fewer than in 1970.
The task of selling advertising has become more important as the paper contends with subscriber losses, placing a new strain on the commercial leadership team.
Industry analyst eMarketer projects retail media to be one of the fastest-growing areas through 2028, when spending will be close to $100 billion.
However, the sector faces challenges around measurement consistency and attribution accuracy across different platforms.
The moves by Mastercard and Meta signal a broader trend of technology and financial services companies seeking to monetize the data they collect through their core operations.
Anthropic has released Claude Opus 4.7, its most capable publicly available model to date, delivering significant improvements in advanced software engineering, high-resolution vision, and long-horizon agentic tasks.
Microsoft is reportedly exploring OpenClaw-style AI features for Copilot that could make the assistant more proactive inside Microsoft 365.
Meta launches Muse Spark, a closed proprietary AI model with tiered reasoning and 3B+ user reach across WhatsApp, Instagram, and Quest VR.
