Restraint, Not Reach, will Define Advertising’s Next Turn: Chase Media Solutions
CANNES, France – Sure, artificial intelligence can deliver hyper-personalized messages at scale. But what if the real competitive advantage lies in knowing when to stay silent?
That idea is driving strategy at one of the newest entrants to the retail media arena, where the temptation to bombard consumers with offers has never been greater. The argument: showing fewer, more relevant messages builds the kind of trust that converts better than any targeting algorithm alone.
“My favorite word from this week at Cannes is ‘restraint’,” said Sam Palmer, president of Chase Media Solutions at JPMorgan Chase, in a video interview with Beet.TV. “Just because I can doesn’t mean that I should.”
From luxury cards to retail media
Palmer’s perspective was forged during his time leading JPMorgan’s Sapphire Reserve credit card, where cultural credibility meant partnering with artists like Es Devlin at Art Basel and booking Black Coffee – who became the world’s top DJ shortly after – for electronic music events. Those curated moments, he argued, sent signals that attracted consumers who recognized the brand understood them.
“When you stack them together, truthfully, start sending a signal and the brand itself starts attracting people who want to be part of it because they now understand that you’re culturally relevant to the specific groups,” Palmer said.
Now he is applying that same curatorial instinct to Chase Media Solutions, the bank’s retail media network, which leverages first-party transaction data from millions of Chase customers. The difference is scale: what was once manual curation for premium cardholders must now happen algorithmically across a vast consumer base.
The Chinese menu problem
Palmer compared the current advertising landscape to walking into a New York Chinese restaurant and being handed page after page of menu options.
“That is not making you happier,” he said. “If you look at premium consumers, you think about hotels that actually deliver the best experience… (they) are not hotels that give you endless choice.”
That extends to how Chase approaches its mobile banking app, where users arrive primarily to check their finances, not to shop. Recognizing the right moment to introduce a commerce offer – and, crucially, when not to – is what Palmer called “the magic sauce.”
“As a consumer, when you come to the Chase mobile app, your primary goal is not always and not necessarily shopping,” he said. “Your primary goal is making sure that your money, your hard-earned money is okay. And we have to respect that because that’s what we build the trust with the consumer.”
Trust beats awareness
The retail media sector is booming. U.S. advertisers are projected to spend $71.09 billion on retail media in 2026, according to eMarketer, as brands chase the closed-loop measurement that first-party data provides.
Palmer positioned Chase Media Solutions’ value proposition squarely around that measurement capability, but framed it through the lens of trust rather than targeting prowess.
“Trust has become a bigger driver of choice than brand awareness because awareness is easy,” Palmer said. “You can buy reach nowadays anywhere. Customers feel that. What is much harder to do is to be able to delight the customer at the right moment where the customer responds with, ‘Wow, I actually needed that, thank you.'”
Proving incrementality
For marketers, the network’s first-party transaction data purports to offer definitive proof that advertising drove sales that would not have happened otherwise.
“It’s not just about showing customers that have completed a transaction actually, but it’s about being able to prove that we found ones that wouldn’t have completed that transaction in the first place,” Palmer said.
That incrementality measurement addresses a persistent challenge in digital advertising, where attribution remains murky despite sophisticated tracking. Chase’s visibility into the full transaction lifecycle – from offer exposure to purchase completion – provides what Palmer said is “clear ROI” for marketing partners.
You’re watching The Beet.TV Leadership Sessions at Cannes Lions 2026, presented by Chase Media Solutions. For more videos from this series, please visit this page. You can find all of our coverage from Cannes Lions 2026 here.
CANNES, France – Sure, artificial intelligence can deliver hyper-personalized messages at scale. But what if the real competitive advantage lies in knowing when to stay silent?
That idea is driving strategy at one of the newest entrants to the retail media arena, where the temptation to bombard consumers with offers has never been greater. The argument: showing fewer, more relevant messages builds the kind of trust that converts better than any targeting algorithm alone.
“My favorite word from this week at Cannes is ‘restraint’,” said Sam Palmer, president of Chase Media Solutions at JPMorgan Chase, in a video interview with Beet.TV. “Just because I can doesn’t mean that I should.”
From luxury cards to retail media
Palmer’s perspective was forged during his time leading JPMorgan’s Sapphire Reserve credit card, where cultural credibility meant partnering with artists like Es Devlin at Art Basel and booking Black Coffee – who became the world’s top DJ shortly after – for electronic music events. Those curated moments, he argued, sent signals that attracted consumers who recognized the brand understood them.
“When you stack them together, truthfully, start sending a signal and the brand itself starts attracting people who want to be part of it because they now understand that you’re culturally relevant to the specific groups,” Palmer said.
Now he is applying that same curatorial instinct to Chase Media Solutions, the bank’s retail media network, which leverages first-party transaction data from millions of Chase customers. The difference is scale: what was once manual curation for premium cardholders must now happen algorithmically across a vast consumer base.
The Chinese menu problem
Palmer compared the current advertising landscape to walking into a New York Chinese restaurant and being handed page after page of menu options.
“That is not making you happier,” he said. “If you look at premium consumers, you think about hotels that actually deliver the best experience… (they) are not hotels that give you endless choice.”
That extends to how Chase approaches its mobile banking app, where users arrive primarily to check their finances, not to shop. Recognizing the right moment to introduce a commerce offer – and, crucially, when not to – is what Palmer called “the magic sauce.”
“As a consumer, when you come to the Chase mobile app, your primary goal is not always and not necessarily shopping,” he said. “Your primary goal is making sure that your money, your hard-earned money is okay. And we have to respect that because that’s what we build the trust with the consumer.”
Trust beats awareness
The retail media sector is booming. U.S. advertisers are projected to spend $71.09 billion on retail media in 2026, according to eMarketer, as brands chase the closed-loop measurement that first-party data provides.
Palmer positioned Chase Media Solutions’ value proposition squarely around that measurement capability, but framed it through the lens of trust rather than targeting prowess.
“Trust has become a bigger driver of choice than brand awareness because awareness is easy,” Palmer said. “You can buy reach nowadays anywhere. Customers feel that. What is much harder to do is to be able to delight the customer at the right moment where the customer responds with, ‘Wow, I actually needed that, thank you.'”
Proving incrementality
For marketers, the network’s first-party transaction data purports to offer definitive proof that advertising drove sales that would not have happened otherwise.
“It’s not just about showing customers that have completed a transaction actually, but it’s about being able to prove that we found ones that wouldn’t have completed that transaction in the first place,” Palmer said.
That incrementality measurement addresses a persistent challenge in digital advertising, where attribution remains murky despite sophisticated tracking. Chase’s visibility into the full transaction lifecycle – from offer exposure to purchase completion – provides what Palmer said is “clear ROI” for marketing partners.
You’re watching The Beet.TV Leadership Sessions at Cannes Lions 2026, presented by Chase Media Solutions. For more videos from this series, please visit this page. You can find all of our coverage from Cannes Lions 2026 here.
