American Express is accumulating a “spend graph” database of its customers’ transaction data to help brands customise their mobile marketing to consumers.
Speaking at the Open Mobile Summit in London, Dan Schulman, group president at American Express, said the company is moving towards creating a “commerce ID” for consumers, which would act a sum of their transactions and brands they are loyal to.
Partner brands of American Express could potentially use this data to target smartphone users with offers and ads when they are in the vicinity of a retail store, or elsewhere on the internet where they might have an intention to make a purchase.
American Express’ partner brands include Zynga, Facebook and Twitter as well as the thousands of merchants that accept its card payments.
Schulman said a commerce ID would be very different to what is known as a social ID – how brands often target consumers on social networks – as often consumers post things on sites like Facebook to project who they want to be rather than who they actually are.
Marketing going forward is not marketing to segments of the population, it’s to each and every one of us…the great thing right now is that we can measure this very specifically…data is the holy grail of digital commerce. It allows us to know when we advertise something online, and someone drags it into their mobile wallet and taps it on a POS, that someone responded to that offer and bought it and what else they bought: think about how powerful that information and data is for marketers.
Keywords: American Express • mobile • Spend Graph