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PayPal Wants to Turn Small Retailers Into Amazon Ads. The Stock Is Rising.

Oct 07, 2025 12:31:00 -0400 by Nate Wolf | #Fintech

PayPal has been expanding into the advertising business. (Dreamstime)

Key Points

Shares of PayPal Holdings jumped on Tuesday after the digital payments company unveiled an advertising-management platform for small businesses.

PayPal Ads Manager will allow companies that use PayPal to create their own retail media networks, or RMNs, industry-speak for merchant-owned ad spaces. Enormous retailers like Amazon.com and Walmart are the primary players in the RMN space, generating billions of dollars in ad revenue each year.

“We’re enabling small businesses to participate in the same high-margin advertising model that’s powering growth at some of the largest companies in the world,” said Mark Grether, the general manager of PayPal Ads.

PayPal stock was up 3.4% to $73.69 on Tuesday, putting it on track for a fourth consecutive positive session. The Nasdaq Composite was down 0.7%.

Ads Manager is PayPal’s latest foray into the advertising business, an effort that accelerated when the company hired Grether last year to lead PayPal Ads. The new ad-management platform builds on the Storefront Ads service released earlier this year, which allows merchants to place ads on third-party sites with a “Buy with PayPal” link.

Small businesses can opt in to Ads Manager and select their ad preferences, and PayPal will automatically place and serve relevant ads on their platforms. The businesses would then receive revenue from advertisers directly through PayPal. Merchants can also use the tool to run their own campaigns.

The platform will be available in early 2026 in the U.S., followed by the United Kingdom and Germany, the company said.

It wasn’t immediately clear how much of an impact the Ads Manager tool would have on PayPal’s financial results. The company isn’t charging an upfront fee or setting a minimum commitment from small businesses. A PayPal spokesperson told Barron’s the company wasn’t sharing pricing information at this time.

Write to Nate Wolf at nate.wolf@barrons.com