Revolut has hired a TikTok executive to lead a media strategy aimed at boosting its revenues by selling advertising space on its app to brands.
Revolut has hired Inam Mahmood, former head of ecommerce partnerships at TikTok UK, to lead a sales team of about 30 people with the ambition of hitting an internal target for advertising revenue derived of about £300 million by 2026.
Revolut in December forecast that it would hit $1.9 billion in revenue this year, nearly double the $1 billion it recorded in the previous 12 months.
The rise comes off the back of strong customer growth, with 300,000 users being added weekly, giving Revolut nearly 40 million customers.
Explaining the strategy, Revolut’s head of growth Antoine Le Nel told the Financial Times: “We could become a media [business] . . . a place where you have an audience and data about the audience and you monetise this.”
He believes the business could derive a “proper chunk” of its total revenue from targeted advertising.
“We know how [users] navigate inside the app, we know some of their interests that they have because they’ve clicked on this and that,” the fintech executive added.
Le Nel said advertisers and distributors had already shown interest in partnering with the fintech, which is running internal tests for targeted advertising and has been in talks to sell advertising space on its app to brands.
“We want people to have a daily routine: you check your Instagram, you check your emails and you check your Revolut,” Le Nel told the FT. “We want to be part of your daily routine.”