Sam’s Club Rolls Out MAP Partners Club

Program connects advertisers with approved agencies and tech partners

4/25/2023

Sam's Club's MAP Partners Club enables advertisers to identify authorized partners that can help them plan, buy, optimize and scale their advertising campaigns.

Sam’s Club has introduced a new partner program for its Member Access Platform (MAP). The program, MAP Partners Club, links advertisers with a certified network of agencies and technology providers to maximize campaign performance. The initiative has kicked off with three tech partners — CommerceIQ, Pacvue and Skai — and two managed service partners — Flywheel and Stackline — with more to come, according to the warehouse club retailer.

MAP Partners Club enables advertisers to identify authorized partners that can help them plan, buy, optimize and scale their advertising campaigns. With their partners, advertisers can bolster their campaigns with bidding and budget optimization, day-parting, advanced analytics and insights, and more.

“One of the pillars of our mission here at MAP is to make it ‘Easy to Buy’ for our advertisers,” noted Austin Leonard, head of sales, Sam’s Club Member Access Platform. “We know that our advertisers often work with multiple partners for media planning and execution across multiple networks and ad tech providers. Through MAP Partners Club, they can leverage world-class partners to integrate Sam’s Club advertising, providing one place to buy and assess performance of sponsored product campaigns — all while driving growth.”

Advertisers and agencies working with Sam’s Club MAP can immediately purchase sponsored product ads as well as campaign-enhancing technologies offered by CommerceIQ, Pacvue and Skai, using a self-service interface. Further, advertisers that prefer to work with a full-service agency for ad buys can immediately begin buying Sam’s Club MAP ads via Flywheel and Stackline. More partners and functionalities will be added to the program in the near future.

For partners, MAP Partners Club provides direct access to thousands of potential customers among Sam’s Club suppliers and advertisers. Once approved, program partners will receive easy-to-understand color-coded badges — tech, agency and more — so that advertisers can easily connect with and implement the partners they require.

In March, MAP began allowing advertisers to attribute in-club purchases to their search ads, making the warehouse club retailer’s retail media platform among the first to connect search and sponsored product ads to offline sales.

Sam’s Club, a division of Bentonville, Ark.-based Walmart Inc., operates nearly 600 clubs in the United States and Puerto Rico. Each week, approximately 230 million customers and members visit Walmart’s more than 10,500 stores and numerous e-commerce websites under 46 banners in 24 countries, with approximately 2.3 million associates worldwide. Walmart U.S. is No. 1 on The PG 100, Progressive Grocer’s 2022 list of the top food and consumables retailers in North America, while Sam’s Club is No. 8.