What: Hospitality is following suit to retail and monetizes the customer data it can gather.

Why it is important: Media Network is not anymore limited to retail: any significant player in the world with enough transaction points with customers can enter the game. As a consequence, retailers will need to make sure that their brand is clear and attractive to advertisers to stand out.

The American hotel chain Marriott has decided to launch into Media Network with the support of Yahoo, offering to advertisers the possibility to reach targeted customers through its apps, websites and room TVs. Anonymized customer data from past searches and reservations will be used to enable brands to display ads relevant to travelers. However, customer or loyalty member data should not be used.

Yahoo will be a supporting partner for the technological part. This move is a direct consequence of Apple’s privacy efforts, which has pushed the whole industry to question how to use first party data and monetize it.

Marriott to debut Ad Network