Advertisers Should Stop Chasing Customers, Start Predicting Purchases: Citi’s Mike Venable
Advertisers spend heavily trying to figure out what consumers want. Now Citi wants to help them figure out what consumers will buy next, using a remarkably useful clue: what they’ve already purchased.
With the launch of Citi Commerce Media, the banking giant is bringing its vast trove of transaction intelligence into an advertising industry that apparently hasn’t reached its quota of media networks just yet.
But Mike Venables, head of media, U.S. brand advertising and experiential marketing at Citi, believes the company’s offering has something that many competitors lack: a broad view of consumers’ purchasing behavior across multiple categories.
In an interview with Beet.TV editorial director Lisa Granatstein during Advertising Week New York 2026, Venables explained how Citi plans to turn everyday transactions into predictive marketing opportunities, why advertisers need to rethink commerce media and what separates a useful customer signal from another excuse to bombard people with ads.
Citi has 70 million reasons to enter advertising
For Citi, launching a commerce media business isn’t exactly a wild departure from its core operations. The bank already has millions of customers who regularly provide valuable clues about their lives every time they swipe a credit card.
“We have an extremely engaged customer base, at scale, and we really understand them,” Venables said.
Those customers reveal their priorities through their purchases, creating opportunities for Citi to identify relevant audiences and help advertisers reach them in a privacy-compliant way.
The scale is considerable. Venables pointed to Citi’s 70 million customers and the billions of purchases they make annually.
There’s also the matter of institutional longevity.
“We have been in business for 200-plus years,” Venables said, noting that James Madison was president when Citi opened its doors.
He couldn’t resist pointing out the historical irony of bringing Citi to Madison Avenue, at least proverbially.
Two centuries later, the bank is getting into the business of helping advertisers figure out who’s about to buy a new couch, book a vacation or spend an alarming amount of money attending a concert.
Your concert ticket is telling on you
Citi Commerce Media’s creative platform, “Spot the Signals,” focuses on predicting purchasing behavior before consumers make their next move.
The premise is straightforward: A transaction can reveal much more than the product or service being purchased.
Consider someone who buys a concert ticket in another city.
To an ordinary observer, that’s a music fan planning a night out. To a commerce media strategist, it’s practically a buffet of potential advertising opportunities.
That person might need airfare, a hotel, restaurant reservations, a rental car and perhaps an entirely new wardrobe because apparently the clothes already hanging in the closet aren’t suitable for watching someone sing.
Venables sees that initial purchase as a signal that can help advertisers anticipate an entire sequence of spending decisions.
“We’re in 2026, reactive marketing is not the most winning strategy,” he said.
Consumers can now research products and make purchasing decisions much faster than in the past. That means the opportunity to influence a decision can disappear before an advertiser has finished scheduling the campaign kickoff meeting.
Citi wants to help brands recognize those opportunities while they’re still relevant.
The company believes its transaction data can help advertisers identify important life moments and anticipate the products or services consumers might need next.
It’s a shift from targeting people based primarily on what they’ve viewed or searched for to understanding what their actual spending behavior suggests.
Stop treating every customer like a walking checkout button
Venables also believes advertisers are making a fundamental mistake with commerce media: assuming every campaign needs to produce an immediate sale.
The problem, he suggested, starts with the name itself.
“I think it sometimes gets pigeonholed into a very kind of lower funnel, you know, performance tactic,” he said.
Commerce media, in his view, shouldn’t be confined to promotional offers, direct-response campaigns and relentless demands that consumers buy something immediately.
Instead, transaction intelligence can support advertising throughout the customer journey, including brand awareness and relationship building.
Venables offered an analogy: Imagine gathering thousands of a brand’s ideal prospects in one room.
Would the smartest approach be to run around demanding that everyone purchase something before leaving?
Probably not, unless the brand’s marketing strategy was developed by an especially aggressive timeshare salesperson.
“Those are the relationships that you wanna nurture,” Venables said.
He argued that commerce data can help marketers understand audiences well enough to create more meaningful interactions, rather than treating every advertising impression as the last chance to close a sale.
In other words, just because marketers know someone might buy something doesn’t mean they should immediately start shouting discount codes.
From content to intent to actual purchases
Venables also offered a broader perspective on how the advertising business has evolved.
In the early 2000s, major media companies relied heavily on content as a way to identify and attract desirable audiences.
During the 2010s, intent-based platforms gained prominence as marketers sought to understand what consumers were actively researching or considering.
Now, in the 2020s, Venables believes the advantage is shifting toward platforms with visibility into actual purchasing behavior.
That’s potentially good news for financial institutions and other businesses that can observe transactions across a wide variety of merchants.
Traditional retail media networks often have deep customer relationships, but their view of consumer behavior may be limited to purchases within their own environments.
Citi believes its broader transaction perspective can reveal connections between purchases that individual retailers might miss.
For advertisers, the appeal is obvious. Instead of seeing only what someone bought at one store, they could gain insights into a wider pattern of spending behavior.
Of course, this also means advertisers may soon have even more audience segments, predictive models and dashboards to contemplate while wondering why their campaigns aren’t delivering the promised return on investment.
Commerce media gold rush may need fewer prospectors
Despite the rapid expansion of commerce media networks, Venables doesn’t expect every new entrant to survive indefinitely.
He suggested the market could eventually contract as advertisers gravitate toward providers with the strongest data, customer relationships and measurement capabilities.
“I think the winners will be the ones who have both breadth and depth in terms of the data that they can leverage and harness,” he said.
The ability to demonstrate incremental results will also be critical.
That could prove particularly important as advertisers face mounting pressure to justify their spending across an increasingly fragmented media ecosystem.
“It’s really hard to prove ROI in media and advertising these days,” Venables said.
For Citi, the opportunity is to combine transaction intelligence, predictive targeting and measurable business outcomes in a single offering.
Whether that ultimately makes Citi Commerce Media a major force in advertising remains to be seen.
But the underlying proposition is intriguing: Consumers leave a trail of purchasing clues every day, and marketers might be able to use those signals to anticipate what happens next.
The trick will be making those predictions useful without turning every credit card transaction into an invitation for another advertiser to follow someone around the internet.
After all, sometimes buying a concert ticket just means you want to see the band. Even if Citi has a pretty good idea which hotel you’ll book afterward.
You’re watching Beet.TV coverage of Advertising Week New York 2026. For more videos from this event, please visit this page.
Advertisers spend heavily trying to figure out what consumers want. Now Citi wants to help them figure out what consumers will buy next, using a remarkably useful clue: what they’ve already purchased.
With the launch of Citi Commerce Media, the banking giant is bringing its vast trove of transaction intelligence into an advertising industry that apparently hasn’t reached its quota of media networks just yet.
But Mike Venables, head of media, U.S. brand advertising and experiential marketing at Citi, believes the company’s offering has something that many competitors lack: a broad view of consumers’ purchasing behavior across multiple categories.
In an interview with Beet.TV editorial director Lisa Granatstein during Advertising Week New York 2026, Venables explained how Citi plans to turn everyday transactions into predictive marketing opportunities, why advertisers need to rethink commerce media and what separates a useful customer signal from another excuse to bombard people with ads.
Citi has 70 million reasons to enter advertising
For Citi, launching a commerce media business isn’t exactly a wild departure from its core operations. The bank already has millions of customers who regularly provide valuable clues about their lives every time they swipe a credit card.
“We have an extremely engaged customer base, at scale, and we really understand them,” Venables said.
Those customers reveal their priorities through their purchases, creating opportunities for Citi to identify relevant audiences and help advertisers reach them in a privacy-compliant way.
The scale is considerable. Venables pointed to Citi’s 70 million customers and the billions of purchases they make annually.
There’s also the matter of institutional longevity.
“We have been in business for 200-plus years,” Venables said, noting that James Madison was president when Citi opened its doors.
He couldn’t resist pointing out the historical irony of bringing Citi to Madison Avenue, at least proverbially.
Two centuries later, the bank is getting into the business of helping advertisers figure out who’s about to buy a new couch, book a vacation or spend an alarming amount of money attending a concert.
Your concert ticket is telling on you
Citi Commerce Media’s creative platform, “Spot the Signals,” focuses on predicting purchasing behavior before consumers make their next move.
The premise is straightforward: A transaction can reveal much more than the product or service being purchased.
Consider someone who buys a concert ticket in another city.
To an ordinary observer, that’s a music fan planning a night out. To a commerce media strategist, it’s practically a buffet of potential advertising opportunities.
That person might need airfare, a hotel, restaurant reservations, a rental car and perhaps an entirely new wardrobe because apparently the clothes already hanging in the closet aren’t suitable for watching someone sing.
Venables sees that initial purchase as a signal that can help advertisers anticipate an entire sequence of spending decisions.
“We’re in 2026, reactive marketing is not the most winning strategy,” he said.
Consumers can now research products and make purchasing decisions much faster than in the past. That means the opportunity to influence a decision can disappear before an advertiser has finished scheduling the campaign kickoff meeting.
Citi wants to help brands recognize those opportunities while they’re still relevant.
The company believes its transaction data can help advertisers identify important life moments and anticipate the products or services consumers might need next.
It’s a shift from targeting people based primarily on what they’ve viewed or searched for to understanding what their actual spending behavior suggests.
Stop treating every customer like a walking checkout button
Venables also believes advertisers are making a fundamental mistake with commerce media: assuming every campaign needs to produce an immediate sale.
The problem, he suggested, starts with the name itself.
“I think it sometimes gets pigeonholed into a very kind of lower funnel, you know, performance tactic,” he said.
Commerce media, in his view, shouldn’t be confined to promotional offers, direct-response campaigns and relentless demands that consumers buy something immediately.
Instead, transaction intelligence can support advertising throughout the customer journey, including brand awareness and relationship building.
Venables offered an analogy: Imagine gathering thousands of a brand’s ideal prospects in one room.
Would the smartest approach be to run around demanding that everyone purchase something before leaving?
Probably not, unless the brand’s marketing strategy was developed by an especially aggressive timeshare salesperson.
“Those are the relationships that you wanna nurture,” Venables said.
He argued that commerce data can help marketers understand audiences well enough to create more meaningful interactions, rather than treating every advertising impression as the last chance to close a sale.
In other words, just because marketers know someone might buy something doesn’t mean they should immediately start shouting discount codes.
From content to intent to actual purchases
Venables also offered a broader perspective on how the advertising business has evolved.
In the early 2000s, major media companies relied heavily on content as a way to identify and attract desirable audiences.
During the 2010s, intent-based platforms gained prominence as marketers sought to understand what consumers were actively researching or considering.
Now, in the 2020s, Venables believes the advantage is shifting toward platforms with visibility into actual purchasing behavior.
That’s potentially good news for financial institutions and other businesses that can observe transactions across a wide variety of merchants.
Traditional retail media networks often have deep customer relationships, but their view of consumer behavior may be limited to purchases within their own environments.
Citi believes its broader transaction perspective can reveal connections between purchases that individual retailers might miss.
For advertisers, the appeal is obvious. Instead of seeing only what someone bought at one store, they could gain insights into a wider pattern of spending behavior.
Of course, this also means advertisers may soon have even more audience segments, predictive models and dashboards to contemplate while wondering why their campaigns aren’t delivering the promised return on investment.
Commerce media gold rush may need fewer prospectors
Despite the rapid expansion of commerce media networks, Venables doesn’t expect every new entrant to survive indefinitely.
He suggested the market could eventually contract as advertisers gravitate toward providers with the strongest data, customer relationships and measurement capabilities.
“I think the winners will be the ones who have both breadth and depth in terms of the data that they can leverage and harness,” he said.
The ability to demonstrate incremental results will also be critical.
That could prove particularly important as advertisers face mounting pressure to justify their spending across an increasingly fragmented media ecosystem.
“It’s really hard to prove ROI in media and advertising these days,” Venables said.
For Citi, the opportunity is to combine transaction intelligence, predictive targeting and measurable business outcomes in a single offering.
Whether that ultimately makes Citi Commerce Media a major force in advertising remains to be seen.
But the underlying proposition is intriguing: Consumers leave a trail of purchasing clues every day, and marketers might be able to use those signals to anticipate what happens next.
The trick will be making those predictions useful without turning every credit card transaction into an invitation for another advertiser to follow someone around the internet.
After all, sometimes buying a concert ticket just means you want to see the band. Even if Citi has a pretty good idea which hotel you’ll book afterward.
You’re watching Beet.TV coverage of Advertising Week New York 2026. For more videos from this event, please visit this page.
