E-commerce marketing · Industry brief

Brian Monahan, senior vice president of Albertsons Media Collective, has departed from the grocery giant's retail media network in an unexpected exit. The Albertsons Media Collective, one of the most prominent grocery media networks, will now report directly to Emily Turner, Albertsons' CMO. Monahan's departure was notable given his planned participation at industry events scheduled for that week.

California Governor Gavin Newsom signed Assembly Bill 1776 (the "COMPETE Act") into law on September 30, 2026, amending the state's Cartwright Act to expand antitrust enforcement against single-firm conduct effective January 1, 2027. The law makes it unlawful for any person to monopolize, monopsonize, attempt to do so, or maintain a monopoly or monopsony, marking a significant expansion from the Act's historical focus on multi-party combinations. State enforcers—the Attorney General and district attorneys—can bring claims requiring proof of "substantial market power," with potential remedies including up to $1 million per violation, injunctive relief, and treble damages in parens patriae actions. California intentionally set its standards broader than federal Sherman Act precedent, with courts instructed to use a flexible sliding-scale analysis rather than the traditional per se/rule of reason framework. The law excludes private rights of action and exempts small businesses and state-authorized firms, though it closes a loophole preventing circumvention through California's Unfair Competition Law. This enforcement mechanism addresses competitive challenges posed by digital platforms and vertically integrated industries specific to California's economy (Dechert LLP legal analysis, October 5, 2026).

Google faces a £1.1 billion (roughly $1.4 billion) collective lawsuit from UK digital publishers alleging the company abused its dominant position in programmatic advertising by bundling ad tech services across the publisher ad server, ad exchange, and demand-side platform to disadvantage competitors and suppress publisher revenues. The claimants contend Google leveraged its control of these interconnected layers to steer bid traffic through proprietary channels, reducing net payouts to content producers while extracting inflated intermediary margins, though industry data suggests exchanges typically pass 65-80% of gross spending to publishers—making the dispute center on whether Google's structural advantages artificially widened intermediary fees. Google defends the integration as delivering technical efficiency, lower latency, fraud prevention, and expanded monetization access for publishers of all sizes, arguing the programmatic market remains highly competitive with publishers using multiple platforms simultaneously. The case mirrors ongoing US Department of Justice and state antitrust actions examining identical ad-stack integrations, and any court determination of anti-competitive conduct could set precedent reshaping pricing structures and interoperability requirements across digital advertising globally.