Amit Patel had been a longtime user of MyFitnessPal, a health and nutrition tracking app, before joining a year ago as CRO.
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 draws on its wealth of user-provided meal planning, fitness and nutrition data.
The move represents an overhaul of MyFitnessPal’s monetization model. The app has long incorporated advertising but carried only a single ad format, a mobile display unit, that was simply plugged into a third-party exchange.
Now, Patel said, MyFitnessPal will go through direct sales channels and carry a larger suite of ad options – although it will still also use SSPs and exchange partners for some inventory, he added.
The company is starting its ad expansion by leaning into video units, he said, and it expects to launch native video within a few months.
Other MyFitnessPal inventory includes app interstitials and full home screen takeovers. MyFitnessPal also publishes an email newsletter, and advertisers can buy in-line ad units or fully sponsor an edition. For example, a recent client case study saw a supplement brand work with one of MyFitnessPal’s on-staff dietitians to craft a newsletter.
The app will also offer branded recipe integrations, Patel said. For example, a yogurt company might promote smoothie recipes that feature its products.
A healthy data feed
To help segment and target audiences, MyFitnessPal will draw on its opt-in data feed. The app’s users log the food products they consume for nutrition and calorie tracking. According to Patel, users upload an average of 16 items per day – as in snacks, drinks, parts of a meal, etc.
This data feed varies in granularity from the more general (like X amount of chicken) down to the SKU-level for specific products (i.e., Butterfingers). People can upload photos of receipts and items or scan product barcodes to log the calorie and nutrition info.
It’s a feedback loop that lends itself well to a retail media play. But MyFitnessPal is taking a deliberately cautious approach with its nascent retail media biz, according to Patel.
Many retail media entrants want to see their business scale immediately, and so are willing to let self-serve platforms bid on their inventory in the open exchange, or list their audiences in a data marketplace like LiveRamp, Patel said.
But that strategy won’t work for MyFitnessPal, he said. “We don’t want to give away our most valuable assets.”
MyFitnessPal also isn’t interested in necessarily owning attribution. It doesn’t close the loop on purchases, which many retailers claim as their competitive edge in advertising.
However, even without closed-loop attribution, Patel said he’s confident that MyFitnessPal’s ad business can operate close to the point of purchase because some of the pilot advertisers on the platform, who ran test campaigns in Q4 last year and Q1 2026, were affiliate marketers. These marketers are buying ads across MyFitnessPal’s inventory on a CPM, he said, taking the risk that they can convert that traffic elsewhere once someone clicks.
MyFitnessPal doesn’t collect any performance fees or affiliate commissions, at least not yet, Patel said. But he considers it a strong indicator of the platform’s viability as a performance marketing platform when affiliate companies are able to make the economics of advertising work.
Meanwhile, there are still many long-term growth opportunities for MyFitnessPal, he said.
Data marketplace sales and off-site audience extensions are probably the lowest-hanging fruit for retail media operators. But Patel said there are more interesting possibilities elsewhere.
For example, he said, at some point advertisers might be able to use the app’s data to inform their marketing on social media, with MyFitnessPal modeling and shipping audiences to the platforms. This is akin to how Shopify Audiences works with social ad platforms.
And if MyFitnessPal’s initial ads launch in the US goes well, Patel said, a global expansion could provide a promising second wind.
“We want to take a thoughtful approach,” he said. After all, he added, “we don’t know what the most valuable version of our audience looks like yet.”
