From Purchase History to Ad Targeting

Cardlytics (which has built an incredibly large database of user purchase histories collected from credit cards, debit cards and electronic checking transfers) has long used the information it has to target advertisers' rewards campaigns to users inside bank sites and apps, promoting customer loyalty by white-labeling its platform to the banks. 

Someone who spends big on sporting equipment, for instance, might see discount coupons for golf clubs when she logs into her bank's app or site. Cardlytics says it has purchase histories for about 120 million accounts in the U.S.

Today, the Atlanta-based company is making that first-party, anonymized data available to advertisers on other sites and apps - plus social media, email or addressable TV - outside of the banking channel, launching its Cardlytics' Platform Solutions, which contains three separate products - Audiences, Measurement and Insight. 

Cardlytics Audiences uses past purchase data to create custom audiences for campaigns across connected media, including display, mobile, video, social, email and TV.

Cardlytics Measurement uses actual purchase data to provide marketers with insight into the sales impact, both in-store and online, of marketing campaigns. This helps marketers measure and optimize strategies against sales without the need for complex attribution models.

Cardlytics Insights provide companies with a full-wallet view of their customers based on their actual purchase behavior, both inside and outside of their brand. These insights enable businesses to understand customer opportunity that enables better decisions across marketing, merchandising, store operations, real estate planning and more.

"As marketers saw the value of the insights we were able to provide from our flagship offering, Cardlytics Direct, we recognized a significant opportunity to extend the impact of our intelligence platform beyond our native banking channel," said Lynne Laube, COO and President, Cardlytics. "Cardlytics Platform Solutions utilize purchase intelligence from our partnerships with more than 1,500 financial institutions to make marketing more relevant and measurable."

Customers can access Cardlytics Platform Solutions through the Cardlytics Gateway, a self-service dashboard, or license Cardlytics' Platform APIs as plug-ins to their own systems. This flexibility allows customers access to Cardlytics' purchase intelligence in the way that works best for their business.