Braintrust Query: What's the content opportunity for brands on Walmart.com and other store websites?
In terms of advertising and content opportunities for brands, Walmart.com's brand showcases offer "always on" presence and even allows links to corporately-branded websites. Sherry Smith, VP and general manager at Triad Digital Media, which buys ads for Walmart.com, said engagement is critical when Walmart has tracked a 68 percent increase in time spent on pages when interactivity is added.
Ms. Smith spoke last week along with Walmart's senior marketing director, PK Van Deloo as part of the Bentonville Chamber's speaking series for Walmart vendors.
Ms. Smith encouraged brands to bring their national banner ads to Walmart.com and she cited Ziploc's use of embedded video, Kellogg's breakfast calculator and Zyrtec's pollen calculator (which gives pollen counts by zip code) as innovative engagement tools. Brands such as 3M have sponsored entire categories (the gifts and celebrations center).
However, Ms. Smith was quick to point out that fractional commitments are welcome as well. Sampling campaigns have been quite successful for Walmart.com (with a five percent click-through rate and opt-in gold to boot) and you can see sampling offers peppered throughout the site. Current sampling opportunities on the website include offers from Prilosec OTC heartburn medicine, Cottonelle Ultra Toilet Paper, Hawaiian Tropic After Sun Body Butter and Sun Crystals All-Natural Sweetener with Stevia.
Since not every product lends itself to sampling and not every vendor is able to provide samples, Walmart.com is encouraging brands to co-create compelling campaigns that leverage a variety of tools and tactics, sampling being just one.
Continuing in the hair-splitting world of click-through rates, Ms. Smith categorized click-through success into three imperatives:
1. Having the right creative;
2. Using the right process, including working within their 8-week lead times; and
3. Utilizing the right media placements (ones that are "contextually relevant").
If all three are mastered, brands can enjoy a return rate that is 3-5 times the industry average, she said.
One of the overriding themes that stayed with me throughout the presentation is how downright measurable all of this has become. I know that many vendors still think of internet spends as risky, airy fairy dart throws; however, both Mr. Van Deloo and Ms. Smith made compelling, data-filled arguments for ROI and performance measurement. They know, for example, that the industry average banner ad click through is 0.14 percent; for Walmart.com, it's 0.42 percent. Fractional stuff but do the math and Walmart.com is tracking at three times the average.
Speaking of tracking...The standard measurements of click through rates and time-on-page reports are still relevant, and Walmart provides these to brands; however, Ms. Smith pointed out that Walmart.com is happy to provide more sophisticated and customized data to its brand sponsors. They now can correlate and track online impressions and in-store sales lift and integrate Retail Link data into their measurements. Bottom line: Walmart and its participating brands can more closely track the impact that brands' online presence is having to in-store sales.
Discussion Question: What's the content opportunity for brands on retail websites? What do you think of the progress Wal-Mart is making incorporating brands online and developing online metrics? How should brands be experimenting with retailers to engage consumers on retail websites?