The conventional logic of retail media goes something like this: the store knows you bought diapers last Tuesday, so it serves you diaper ads this Tuesday. The closed loop, from exposure to transaction, has been the founding premise of approximately every pitch deck to emerge from the sector since its invention.
A new entrant would like to challenge that premise — or at least bend it in an interesting direction.
Backpack Media, which describes itself as the first education-powered commerce media network, is built atop Sallie, a company focused on helping students plan and pay for college. The network is led by Markus Steinsieck, whose previous role was running Sephora's media business, which he says grew to more than $200 million in revenue within two and a half years.
Mr. Steinsieck's argument is that transaction data is a lagging indicator. Life-stage data, he contends, is a leading one. Through Sallie's relationships with students, parents and recent graduates, Backpack Media has signals that no traditional retailer can match: when someone is moving into a dorm, choosing a major, graduating, signing a lease on a first apartment.
"If I know when you're moving into college, when you're getting your first car, when you get your first job, I essentially know your future financial trajectory," Mr. Steinsieck said in an interview.
An advertiser selling credit cards or car insurance does not need to know what a 21-year-old bought on Amazon last month. They need to know she is a senior studying engineering, about to graduate and statistically likely to relocate to an expensive city. That is the pitch.
(Whether a student planning for college particularly wants to be viewed as a predictive signal for advertisers is, of course, a separate question.)
The model raises familiar tensions. Commerce media networks built on sensitive data — health records at CVS, financial behavior at Chase, and now education-finance data — occupy different territory than a grocery chain serving sponsored search results. Mr. Steinsieck says everything is anonymized and aggregated, and that brands never see individual-level information. "We never sell personal data, ever," he said.
Asked whether Backpack Media is really a commerce media network in the conventional sense, Mr. Steinsieck offered a diplomatic answer. "I guess it depends on how you define commerce," he said. "To me, we are a media network."
The definition may matter less than the execution. And the execution, as with all things involving students and money, will be watched carefully.
Original story published in The Drum: "Kiri Masters: Meet the former Sephora exec betting commerce media can predict the future | The Drum"