Home Ad Exchange News Sam’s Club To Acquire Triad; Chase CMO Kristin Lemkau Is Promoted

Sam’s Club To Acquire Triad; Chase CMO Kristin Lemkau Is Promoted

SHARE:

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here.

Welcome To The Club

Sam’s Club has agreed to acquire advertising technology and some executives from Triad, its retail ad tech partner and sales rep, Ad Age reported. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Along with the technology, Sam’s Club will pick up much of the team that has worked on its account. Triad, a WPP agency, recently lost the Walmart account, but has other blue chip retail clients, including Staples, Kohl’s, Wayfair, The Home Depot and CVS. Sam’s Club, which is owned by Walmart, is following in its parent company’s footsteps by leaning on Triad to establish its in-house media operation. But unlike Walmart, it’s just subsuming the Triad tech and execs that it wants. More.

Market Makers

One of the world’s most visible CMOs, JPMorgan Chase’s Kristin Lemkau, has been tapped for a new role leading the company’s newly reorganized wealth management business. “Still think marketers can’t get president or CEO roles?” tweeted Salesforce strategy chief Jon Suarez-Davis after the announcement. The Wall Street Journal notes, “JPMorgan is facing an industry where big rivals and hot startups are fighting to appeal to millennials and first-time investors.” With that mandate in mind, putting a marketer in charge of the banking group makes more sense than a predictable choice from finance or sales. More.

Full Circle

Verizon Media is laying off 150 employees this week, or 1.4% of its workforce across multiple divisions, CNN Business reports. The cuts follow a larger layoff of 800 people, or 7% of staff, earlier this year after the unit failed to meet revenue goals. The layoffs are another black mark on Verizon Media Group (née Oath), which launched in 2017 after the telco purchased AOL and Yahoo to create a media and ad tech powerhouse. But Oath failed to meet those expectations, and Verizon wrote down the unit by $4.6 billion and rebranded it to Verizon Media Group. Verizon Media CEO Guru Gowrappan plans to focus the company on advertising, subscriptions and ecommerce moving forward. More.

But Wait, There’s More

You’re Hired

Must Read

Monopoly Man looks on at the DOJ vs. Google ad tech antitrust trial (comic).

2025: The Year Google Lost In Court And Won Anyway

From afar, it looks like Google had a rough year in antitrust court. But zoom in a bit and it becomes clear that the past year went about as well as Google could have hoped for.

Why 2025 Marked The End Of The Data Clean Room Era

A few years ago, “data clean rooms” were all the ad tech trades could talk about. Fast-forward to 2026, and maybe advertisers don’t need to know what a data clean room is after all.

The AI Search Reckoning Is Dismantling Open Web Traffic – And Publishers May Never Recover

Publishers have been losing 20%, 30% and in some cases even as much as 90% of their traffic and revenue over the past year due to the rise of zero-click AI search.

Privacy! Commerce! Connected TV! Read all about it. Subscribe to AdExchanger Newsletters

No Waiting for May – CES Is Where The TV Upfront Season Starts 

If any single event can be considered the jumping-off point for TV upfronts, it’s the Consumer Electronics Showcase (CES), which kicks off this week in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Comic: This Is Our Year

Comic: This Is Our Year

It’s been 15 years since this comic first ran in January 2011, and there’s something both quaint and timeless about it. Here’s to more (and more) transparency in 2026, and happy New Year!

From AI To SPO: The Top 10 AdExchanger Guest Columns Of 2025

The generative AI trend generated endless hot takes this year, but the ad industry also had plenty to say about growing competition between DSPs and SSPs. Here are AdExchanger’s top 10 most popular guest columns of 2025 and why they resonated.