A recent story highlights the hot war that keeps picking up steam between Walmart and Amazon. The two have been back and forth over the past 25 years... Mostly Amazon taking ideas from Walmart in its early history, inventing new concepts, and Walmart returning the favor in the last 5 years.

The latest involves a story from MarTech involving Walmart's test of shoppable ads on NBCU's Peacock. During commercials on shows like "Below Deck" (which I confess is a guilty pleasure of mine) viewers are able to flip through products worn on the show and purchase. Kind of a "purchase-tainment".

QR code takes you to checkout. Not terribly innovative per se, but something to track. Big problem though - I'm probably going to look on TikTok or Insta anyway if I'm watching TV not just Walmart. Still, it's a worthy experiment.

Walmart does not have its own media distribution outlets, and must seek out partners (Walmart used to own the ill-fated Vudu, no more), unlike Amazon which is more much advanced in its Prime Video, IMDB, and FreeVee outlets for video/TV distribution.

It will be interesting to see if Walmart continues to develop a network of partners looking for an alternative to the Amazon ecosystem. It's hard to imagine that either Amazon or Walmart will hook up with Disney, however. That prize is likely for Apple.