back to article PayPal splashes cash on biz that persuades folks to splash cash online

PayPal has invested in e-commerce tech firm Cloud IQ as part of the upstart's latest £4m funding round. Cloud IQ claims to be able to encourage people to spend 10 per cent more online, by throwing targeted ads and personalised emails at visitors to their clients’ websites. PayPal has previously partnered the firm, but the …

  1. Commswonk

    I may be a lone voice, but...

    Cloud IQ claims to be able to encourage people to spend 10 per cent more online, by throwing targeted ads and personalised emails at visitors to their clients’ websites.

    Such behaviour is almost guaranteed to have me frothing at the mouth in anger; the last thing it will do is encourage me to spend more - it might even make me spend less with the offending organisation.

    At the same time we hear almost daily about mounting concern at the increasing level of personal debt; it would be nice if someone devised a scheme that discouraged people from spending more, especially if they haven't actually got the money to spend in the first place.

    1. Chris G

      Re: I may be a lone voice, but...

      Any ad/promo emails that get past my filters really piss me off, they will get blocked on principle.

      I must have a look at PP to see if there are any preferences I can turn on, they irritate me anyway, my IP is Spanish so all emails are sent in Spanish and I can't set a preference on a multinational site for English. Chinese sites do better than that.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: I may be a lone voice, but...

        they irritate me anyway, my IP is Spanish so all emails are sent in Spanish and I can't set a preference on a multinational site for English.

        I get the same in French all because I was forced to use their 'services' when I was at my holiday home which they now use as mt home address. From that I get the impression that PP as a company has no concept of a holiday home being in another country.

        It wouldn't be so bad if their forms accepted a delivery address different to the home address, one that is in another country.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: I may be a lone voice, but...

      > "Such behaviour is almost guaranteed to have me frothing at the mouth in anger..."

      Yes, but you are the exception. The large majority are being slowly conditioned to accept this sort of 'market idealization' as the new normal. In effect, human culture (in the West anyway) is evolving so as to maximize the velocity of money. This Paypal thing is one of the various methods by which that happens. Sometimes people fight against the methods of the market, and sometimes they win, but eventually the market will win (mostly), by outlasting the opposition if nothing else.

      I'm just wondering if that's actually bad, or if my bizarre attitudes about privacy and moderation would be looked at with amusement by people 100 years in the future.

    3. TheVogon

      Re: I may be a lone voice, but...

      "throwing targeted ads"

      Good luck with me seeing any of those.

      "and personalised emails"

      And good luck with the bill for that under the GDPR...

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Good luck

    I'm behind 7 ad-blockers

  3. alain williams Silver badge

    Is PayPal giving purchase history ?

    PayPal is in a good position to know what people have bought. So does 'partnering' mean 'we tell you about what they have bought so that you can send them more spam' ?

    If so then this is one less reason to go anywhere near PayPal.

  4. Captain DaFt

    Cloud IQ claims to be able to encourage people to spend 10 per cent more online, by throwing targeted ads and personalised emails at visitors to their clients’ websites.

    Yah, I'm calling bullshit on this one.

    What they're most likely doing is identifying spending patterns, then targeting the specific suckers clients to sell the ads to.

    Then their clients see a correlation between the ads and increased shopping, and believe the ads are working.

    They could use the data to sell the marks a bogus 'Charm O Fortune' and get the same results in all likely hood.

    1. Don Dumb
      Thumb Up

      @Captain DaFt - "Yah, I'm calling bullshit on this one."

      This seems to be another crazy net tech spending spree. The words of suspicion -

      "The startup itself claims to take advantage of artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies, although there isn't a vast amount of detail proffered up by the company on the data science behind its platform."

      They present little evidence for their worth but claim to make people spend more. Unsurprisingly the only time when I visit paypal is at the point of spending, I've already made my decision (and I'm blocking anything that isn't directly helping me pay)

  5. frank ly

    Personalised emails

    Where do they get your email address from and which email address do they use?

    PayPal will certainly have a record of the IP addresses that you've used when authorising a PayPal payment so maybe they 'partner' with PayPal so they can use your PayPal sign-in address as the target email address.

    Paypal do give your sign-in address to merchants that you buy from, even though it's half of your sign-in security so I suppose they'll have no problem giving it to any website that wants it.

    1. JimboSmith Silver badge

      Re: Personalised emails

      I use a specific address @mydomainname.com for all firms who I deal with that require personal information (inc email addresses) and Paypal are no exception. Therefore it's a bit obvious if someone has sold on my details as the email address doesn't match the company contacting me.

  6. TheVogon

    "PayPal will certainly have a record of the IP addresses that you've used when authorising a PayPal payment so maybe they 'partner' with PayPal so they can use your PayPal sign-in address as the target email address."

    Not sure what the IP address has to do with that. They can't SPAM your Paypal address without breaking data protection laws.

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