Types of PayPal ads: Which is right for your business?

Quick Answer: The different types of PayPal ads help businesses meet specific marketing goals by targeting shoppers across three main areas: onsite, offsite, and via offers. These campaigns use first-party purchase insights to reach high-intent shoppers on PayPal, Venmo, and the open web.

1. Onsite Ads

Onsite Ads are campaigns that appear directly within the PayPal and Venmo environments, as well as on PayPal.com. These placements include valuable spots, like in-app banners and post-checkout placements. Since the shopper is already logged in, the path from discovery to purchase is fast and easy.

This type of PayPal advertising is great for re-engaging customers during high-purchase-intent moments. For example, people on PayPal or Venmo are already in a shopping mindset.

During a survey, 72% of PayPal users said they’re open to making a purchase while using the app or site.¹ And, 63% of Venmo users surveyed share the same sentiment.²

Onsite ads work because they reach customers who are further along the sales pipeline and already primed to make a decision.

2. Offsite Ads

Offsite Ads can extend your reach by placing your promotions across the open web and third-party sites. Your ads may appear in placements like:

• Premium publisher sites
• Connected TV (CTV)
• Storefront ads

These ads can use data from the PayPal transaction graph to help you create targeted ads and generate leads from outside of our core network. The ads can reach high-intent audiences based on shopping history and audience segments built with cross-merchant insights.

This approach can help expand your customer base by maintaining high relevance while respecting customer privacy.

3. Offers

Offers are personalized deals and discounts tied to a shopper’s past verified spending behavior. These deals appear in dedicated sections within the PayPal and Venmo apps.

They’re designed to reward and re-engage shoppers with highly relevant incentives, and can lead to a conversion and return purchases.

This ad type operates on a pay-for-performance basis. Advertisers typically only pay when a conversion, like a sale, actually occurs. This makes the spending efficient. For example, you could show a 10% cash back offer to select users while they’re comparing different products.

How PayPal Ads Manager fits into PayPal advertising

The PayPal Ads Manager is a self-serve platform built to help small businesses plan, launch, and manage advertising more easily. You can essentially handle campaign setup, optimization, and reporting all in one place.

Beyond running campaigns, the Ads Manager also enables you to participate in retail media. Small businesses can get started easily with no marketing experience required. Get suggested audiences and repurpose your ad creative to make it easy to promote your own online store.

"Small businesses are the backbone of our economy, but they've been locked out of the retail media revolution that's transforming how major retailers generate revenue. PayPal Ads Manager changes that equation entirely.

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, while simultaneously creating thousands of new, high-quality advertising placements for brands."

– Mark Grether, SVP and General Manager, PayPal Ads³

Why it matters for advertisers

For advertisers, the Ads Manager is an important part of the broader PayPal marketing ecosystem. This approach helps expand the pool of available ad placements to include point-of-purchase advertising, retail media, and more for broader visibility.

Here are a few more reasons why it matters for advertisers:

• More inventory across small business sites: You get access to a wider variety of specialized sites where your audience could be shopping.
• High-purchase intent shoppers: These smaller e-commerce sites often attract customers who are ready to make a purchase.
• Broader cross-merchant visibility: Your ads can help reach shoppers across different categories and brand sites simultaneously.

How to choose the right PayPal ad format

Choosing the right ad format means aligning the ad's reach and placement with your specific business objective. Do you need immediate sales, or are you focused on building broad recognition? These types of PayPal advertising are designed to help you meet different goals.

Offers: For fast conversions

If your goal is to drive immediate sales and move a specific product quickly, Offers may be a good fit. Since they deliver highly personalized, cash-back style incentives directly to high-intent shoppers, they can lead to conversions. This is the format to use when your priority is encouraging a shopper to buy right now.

Offsite ads: For reach or awareness

If you’re focused on introducing your brand to a large, new audience or building general recognition, Offsite Ads are ideal. They help extend your reach beyond the PayPal and Venmo environments to the open web, including publisher sites. This helps you target relevant audiences that may not yet be familiar with your business.

Onsite ads: For re-engaging existing or warm audiences

For businesses looking to increase sales among their existing customers or shoppers with high purchase intent, Onsite Ads are a strong option. These ads appear when the user is already logged into the PayPal or Venmo app, positioning them closer to checkout.

This format is designed to help capture sales from a highly qualified audience at lower customer acquisition costs.

PayPal Ads Manager: For monetizing your own traffic

If your primary goal is to generate passive revenue from the traffic you already drive to your e-commerce site, the PayPal Ads Manager might be the solution. This format turns your storefront into a first-party data advertising channel. Hosting third-party ads lets you earn revenue without needing to invest in creating new campaigns or ad creative.

Best practices for PayPal Ads

Once you know which types of PayPal ads are best for your business goal, the next step is to run your campaigns efficiently. These tips can help you better promote your small business online:

• Keep your product feed updated: Your product feed is the foundation of many ad formats and provides the essential product data, including pricing and inventory levels. Keeping it accurate and updated helps you ensure shoppers see the correct information and that your ads are always relevant.
• Use clear product imagery and short headlines: The creative elements of your ad are what grab a shopper’s attention. Use high-quality, clear images that showcase your product well. Pair those images with short, direct headlines that clearly communicate the offer or value proposition to improve your click-through rate.
• Test one variable at a time: When you optimize your campaign, change only one element, like the image, the headline, or the audience segment, at a time. By isolating variables, you can clearly see which change caused the performance improvement or drop.
• Surface seasonal deals early: Shoppers often start looking for holiday or seasonal deals well before the actual event. Launching your relevant offers and promotions early helps you capture demand at the beginning of the shopping cycle.
• Use first-party data: The PayPal Ads platform uses robust first-party purchase insights. Utilizing this data helps you target customers based on verified spending behavior, not just site visits. This specific targeting can help drive high conversion rates from shoppers with high purchase intent.
• Keep an eye on incrementality: Incrementality measures the actual lift in sales your ads cause, which wouldn't have happened otherwise. Focusing on how much your ads genuinely increase sales can reveal which ad formats are providing the best return.

Using PayPal Ads to support your strategy

The value of PayPal marketing is simple. It helps small businesses reach customers who are already in the process of buying. PayPal Ads give you the flexibility to choose an option that best matches your goals, whether that’s driving sales, increasing brand visibility, or rewarding loyal customers.

Learn more about how PayPal Ads can help your business connect with high-intent customers and drive meaningful results.