"typical adware" - heh heh! Seriously, in the consumer space everyone wants "free" so affiliate marketing is a sensible route - see the consumer internet for evidence. In the enterprise markets customers are focused on delivery outside the pure bits - open source bits are necessary but not sufficient - subscriptions such as Ubuntu Advantage with SLA's, management frameworks and consulting are viable there.
Ubuntu's distributions are the reference root FS for Cloud Foundry, to which IBM is the second largest contributor of treasure and engineering effort.
Disclaimer: I work for Pivotal, who are the first.
Any specifics you can share?
Conversely, CPU intensive Java don't really seem to enjoy much, if any, advantage, which makes it a very, very expensive option for doing that.
There are a bunch of factors to consider (for example, if you've got zLinux and zOS co-resident on the same system there are some interesting things you can do with your legacy and modern code bases), but in general I'd want to prove anything myself before diving onto a Z.
Interesting they're working with Canonical on this - the Z has historically been a SuSE stronghold, with a lot of the development of Linux-on-Z happening in Germany, and Red Hat trailing behind. I'd be wary it will be another increasingly typical adware effort from them.
(I follow the main zLinux mailing lists for my day job, and I see a lot of folks from SuSE, some folks from Red Hat, a bunch of people from IBM, and basically no-one from the Ubuntu/Canonical world. Usual disclaimers apply.)