Amit Patel was a long-time user of MyFitnessPal, a health and nutrition tracking app, before joining as CRO a year ago.
One of the reasons he joined, Patel told AdExchanger, is that he felt there was “untapped potential” in the app’s approach to advertising.
Fast forward to today, and MyFitnessPal has just announced the launch of a data-driven advertising business that leverages its wealth of user-generated meal planning, fitness and nutrition data.
This move represents an overhaul of MyFitnessPal’s monetization model. The app has long included ads but only had the form of ads, a mobile display unit, that was simply plugged into a third-party exchange.
Now, Patel said, MyFitnessPal will move beyond direct sales channels and have larger advertising options — though it will still use SSPs and exchange partners for some inventory, he added.
He said the company is starting to develop its ad by relying on video units, and expects to launch native video in a few months.
Other features of MyFitnessPal include app interfaces and full home screen capture. MyFitnessPal also publishes an email newsletter, and advertisers can purchase online advertising units or sponsor a copy entirely. For example, a recent client case study saw a supplement brand work to produce a newsletter from MyFitnessPal’s employee nutritionists.
Patel said the app will offer branded recipe integration. For example, a yogurt company might promote smoothie recipes that feature its products.
Nutritional health information
To help segment and target audience, MyFitnessPal will pull in its curated data feed. App users enter the food products they consume to track nutrition and calories. According to Patel, users upload an average of 16 items per day – like snacks, drinks, food portions, etc.
Its data feed varies from the most general (such as X amount of chicken) to the SKU level for specific products (eg, Butterfingers). People can upload photos of receipts and items or scan product barcodes to log calorie and nutritional information.
It’s a feedback loop that lends itself well to the retail media game. But MyFitnessPal is being deliberately cautious with its new retail media business, according to Patel.
Patel said many retail media entrants want to see their business scale immediately, and are therefore willing to allow self-service platforms to bid on their listings on an open exchange, or list their audience on a data marketplace such as LiveRamp.
But that strategy won’t work for MyFitnessPal, he said. “We don’t want to lose our most valuable asset.”
MyFitnessPal is also not interested in essential property ownership. It doesn’t close the loop on shopping, which many retailers claim is their competitive edge in advertising.
However, even without closed-loop attribution, Patel said he’s confident MyFitnessPal’s advertising business can work closer to the point of purchase because some of the pilot advertisers on the platform, which ran test campaigns in Q4 last year and Q1 2026, were affiliate marketers. Those marketers buy ads on MyFitnessPal listings on a CPM basis, he said, taking the risk that they could convert that traffic elsewhere when someone clicks.
MyFitnessPal doesn’t collect performance fees or affiliate commissions, at least not yet, Patel said. But he considers it a strong indicator of the platform’s ability as a performance marketing platform when affiliates are able to make the economics work for advertising.
Meanwhile, there are still long-term growth opportunities for MyFitnessPal, he said.
Data marketing sales and expanding out-of-area audiences are probably the lowest-hanging fruit for retail media operators. But Patel said there are more exciting possibilities elsewhere.
For example, he said, advertisers can sometimes use the app’s data to inform their marketing on social media, with MyFitnessPal modeling and driving traffic to the platforms. This is similar to how Shopify’s audience works with social ad platforms.
And if MyFitnessPal’s initial ad launch in the U.S. goes well, Patel said, international expansion could provide a nice second wind.
“We want to take a thoughtful approach,” he said. However, he added, “We don’t know what the most valuable version of our audience looks like yet.”
#MyFitnessPal #launch #retail #media #health #wellness #subsection #AdExchanger