New platform harnesses American Express’ predictive machine learning capabilities and spending insights to help companies grow their businesses
NEW YORK – American Express today announced the launch of Amex Advance, which harnesses industry-leading machine learning techniques to deliver personalization services that help marketers customize target audiences, personalize customer experiences and measure their own marketing effectiveness.
The Amex Advance platform allows for the secure analysis of American Express closed-loop1 transaction data alongside partner data and publicly available consumer data in order to develop insights about the future buying behaviors of a desired audience within the U.S. population.
The American Express closed-loop network analyzes more than $1 trillion in Card Member purchases annually. For years, insights from these analyses have been the foundation for personalizing internal and third-party marketing programs for millions of American Express® Card Members around the world. These analyses are now being extrapolated to a much broader consumer base that goes beyond American Express Card Members. Amex Advance and its partners will use these insights to deliver advertising to more narrowly targeted audience segments and personalized recommendations.
Through the Amex Advance interactive portal partners can access predictive insights, request highly customized audiences and analyze projected audience performance. Partners currently include a select group of publishers, advertising networks and marketing audience providers, such as Viacom, Wiland, and Acxiom Audience Solutions.
“American Express’ understanding of the shopping behaviors leading up to everyday and significant life moments can help us predict a consumer’s intent to purchase a broad range of products and services,” said Marc Ginsberg, vice president and general manager, Amex Advance. “At a time when companies are searching to make more data-driven decisions, Amex Advance’s predictive machine learning, deep consumer insights and platform capabilities deliver precise marketing customization.”
Unlike the many off-the-shelf options in market, Amex Advance will produce customized audience services for each company based on their unique marketing goals. Current Amex Advance products can help partners with:
Identifying and anticipating consumer spending trends across brands, categories, interests and life events
Marketing and advertising strategies for targeting across digital, television, and direct marketing channels
Customer acquisition, upgrade, and retention campaigns
Measurement of real spend outcomes
Customized insights and audience analytics tailored to specific brands via its self-service Amex Advance platform
All data, including American Express and partner data, will be anonymized and encrypted in a secure platform. To further preserve the privacy of its Card Members and partners’ customers, the platform is hosted by an independent third-party, Acxiom, so the data can be analyzed in a segmented environment.
Using predictive machine learning algorithms, Amex Advance analyzes these data sets to produce insights about the future buying behaviors of the partner’s desired audience.
From these insights, Amex Advance and its partners can create enhanced audience targets with the highest intent to purchase. An example would be a pet store brand looking to find consumers who are most likely to get a dog during the upcoming holiday season. Instead of targeting a consumer audience who they know already shops at their stores, Amex Advance could help them reach new consumers based Amex Advance’s anonymized insights into the buying habits of consumers prior to pet ownership. Amex Advance insights could show that U.S. consumers that spent more on landscape services, summer camps and bicycle shops are the most likely to get a pet in the next three months. The end result is an Amex Advance audience target for the partner’s advertising campaign.
All Card Member data is anonymized and aggregated prior to being used to develop the insights that drive Amex Advance services. Card Members’ transactions and interactions with American Express, as well as information that identifies them personally or as a Card Member, will always remain de-identified.
“American Express’ closed-loop data allows us to analyze a large volume of real spending that can help marketers across a range of industries connect with customers and provide unique value,” said Ash Gupta, president, Global Credit Risk & Information Management, American Express. “Partners will be able to access these insights, and leverage the power of American Express’ predictive data science, combined with their own, in a self-service capacity and at scale through the Amex Advance platform.”
About Amex Advance
Amex Advance is a data-driven business that partners with companies across the advertising, travel and service industries to deliver curated personalization services optimized for their customers. Leveraging best-in-class predictive machine learning, deep consumer insights, connectivity capabilities and an integrated platform, Amex Advance transforms its deterministic data insights into customized solutions to solve partners’ key business challenges. For more information, visit americanexpress.com/
1American Express serves as a Card issuer and a merchant acquirer, and maintains direct relationships with Card Members and merchants. This enables the company to operate a closed-loop network and provide marketing programs to merchants and special offers and services to Card Members. This model differentiates the company from the competition and allows access to payment transactions from both the Card Member and the merchant perspective.
