Courtesy of Walmart
Is Walmart Connect the Solution Advertisers Need?
Walmart is amplifying its advertising platform, Walmart Connect, which was introduced in 2021, to empower advertisers to maximize the effectiveness of their media spend. This upgrade enables advertisers to deliver personalized ads tailored to specific times and contexts, spanning across in-store TV walls, self-checkout screens, Walmart’s digital properties, mobile devices, and corporate events.
Outlined in a blog post, Walmart discussed four key strategies it plans to implement throughout 2024 to elevate the value proposition of Walmart Connect for advertisers.
Here’s a detailed breakdown of Walmart Connect’s efforts this year:
- Extending accessibility: Walmart Connect is dedicated to offering more options for advertisers of all types. Whether it’s established suppliers or emerging businesses, Walmart Connect is making it easier for brands to tap into the power of Walmart Connect. The self-serve platform has seen significant growth, with Marketplace sellers leading the charge.
- Exploring new frontiers: The shopping journey is evolving, and so is Walmart Connect. The team is constantly exploring new ways to engage customers, both online and in-store. From demo stations to media partnerships with platforms like Roku and TikTok, Walmart Connect is committed to providing marketers with diverse avenues to connect with their audience.
- Enhancing targeting and measurement: Precision is key in advertising, and Walmart Connect is doubling down on its targeting and measurement capabilities. With access to Walmart’s first-party insights, brands can better understand the impact of their campaigns and optimize accordingly. Walmart Connect is also investing in sharper omnichannel measurement and advanced targeting options.
- Expanding creative capabilities: Creative solutions are at the heart of what Walmart Connect does. This year, the team is rolling out more tools and resources to help advertisers craft compelling campaigns. From integrated marketing solutions to enhanced ad creative capabilities, Walmart Connect is empowering brands to make meaningful connections with Walmart customers.
Firstly, Walmart is diversifying its advertiser base by enhancing accessibility for different types of advertisers, including API and agency partners. This effort includes expanding access to onsite display ads through a primarily programmatic and auction-based model, supporting non-endemic brands, and providing increased international support.
Moreover, Walmart is exploring new touchpoints within stores to increase customer engagement. This initiative involves expanding in-store demo stations and sampling opportunities and experimenting with new areas to connect with customers and enhance brand awareness.
The retailer is also aiming to refine its targeting and measurement capabilities, with plans to introduce sharper omnichannel measurement tools and enhanced conversion insights. These measures will allow advertisers to better understand campaign performance and improve their strategies as needed. Specifically, Walmart stated that it plans to roll out “brand lift measurement and rest-of-market analysis for Walmart DSP and In-Store Audio, expanded access to Walmart AdMix, and consideration metrics.”
Last but not least, Walmart is expanding its creative capabilities by offering more ways for advertisers to engage with customers through various placements and formats, including seasonal programs and single-supplier-led store events. Additionally, Walmart plans to introduce new creative capabilities such as video, new templates, and expanded discoverability options.
According to Walmart Connect, the focus is on fostering connections — connections between customers and the brands they love, connections that help businesses grow, and connections that benefit everyone involved. The mission revolves around creating meaningful experiences for shoppers, aiding brands in boosting their visibility, and ultimately enhancing the overall retail landscape.
Walmart Connect’s advertising business has been gaining traction lately, especially with recent developments such as the agreement to acquire VIZIO and the introduction of new in-store experiences. But beyond just selling products, Walmart Connect is focused on providing solutions that address the core marketing challenges brands face, aligning with Walmart’s core values.
Discussion Questions
How will Walmart’s expansion of in-store ads and integration of digital platforms like TikTok and Roku reshape the retail advertising landscape, and what does this mean for traditional advertising channels?
What effect will Walmart Connect’s focus on inclusive advertising have on competition in retail, especially for smaller businesses and new brands?
As Walmart improves its targeting and data analysis, how might this impact broader marketing trends in retail, and what challenges could arise regarding balancing consumer privacy concerns with the demand for personalized advertising experiences?
Poll
Loading …BrainTrust
Melissa Minkow
Director, Retail Strategy, CI&T
Brian Delp
CEO, New Sega Home
Walmart has the advantage of scale: across its various stores and channels it gets hundreds of millions of visits every week. That is an audience that many brands want to be in front of, and Walmart Connect enables that reach. Walmart is being innovative in how it connects customers and advertisers and that will help it to differentiate from many of the other retail media networks out there. What Walmart must ensure, however, is the various advertising activities do not detract from the overall customer experience. So far I think that balance has been struck.
Walmart is primed for this initiative with all the data capabilities they possess and the wide range of consumers that shop them. This makes sense, and I think they’ll be able to pioneer some new moves in the retail media space. Now that the digital landscape of retail media has been pretty figured out, it’s time the physical landscape takes off as well.
This presents a significant area of revenue potential for Walmart however, I don’t see them reaching their full potential until fundamental basics of the website are improved. The merchandising support and functionality of the site need to catch up with these internal goals, not to mention its competition. Until the basics are in order, it could be a hard sell to justify these investments to vendors.
Walmart’s strategy and tactics here are fully supportive of my mantra:
Explore + Experiment + Execution = Experience³
It’s not a simple sum of the parts. It’s Exponential
Walmart is “expanding in-store demo stations and sampling opportunities and experimenting with new areas to connect with customers”. Customers want to Explore + Experiment and Walmart is Executing to that expectation. Perfect. It’s not tech for tech’s sake, but tech as a vehicle for elevating the whole customer interaction with the store and brand.
“Walmart Connect is focused on providing solutions…”. Providing solutions. Not just messaging, not just “buy me, buy me”, but solutions. As a shopper, I look forward to a lot less messaging and a lot more solutions. As a brand or retailer, I would like to elevate beyond messaging and cultivate truly engaged customers who look to me as the go-to solution provider. That’s long term value.
Brands would be hard-pressed to find a more robust media network than Walmart’s well-named Walmart Connect and, as with most Walmart solutions, it isn’t a stand-alone platform. At NRF, Walmart’s group director of data ventures presented a case study that hinted at how Walmart Connect and its multi-channel Luminate platform will increasingly work together to translate data insights into optimized advertising. That Dunnhumby co-presented with Walmart says a lot. Platform scale, synergy, and monetization are Walmart’s killer advantages.
A lot of retailers are launching retail media networks to monetize their shopper audience. Most of these will be results in more noise for shoppers and hard to verify results.
Walmart’s approach is more comprehensive with a focus on shopper experience and measured results. Results from Walmart’s investments and thoughtful process will create an ad revenue magnet.
Retailers are restructuring the retail advertising landscape to align with consumers’ omnichannel shopping and media habits. Traditional ad channels like linear TV and radio are eroding as investment and talent flow into retail media to help brands get closer to the consumer and influence purchase decisions.
New and smaller brands with niche or in-demand products could get discovered more easily by buying targeted ads from Walmart Connect. Smaller brands could start with localized ad campaigns that fit their budgets as they test for marketing effectiveness.
This is a smart evolution of Walmart Connect that allows Walmart to fully monetize every aspect of their customer reach, be it in-store or digital channels. This represents a natural evolution for retail media overall extending into new channels, like connected TV with the acquisition of Vizio, and partnerships with Roku, TikTok, etc. Walmart is also targeting non-endemic advertisers with this upgrade to broaden the scope if their network. This won’t create dramatic change overnight, but it does send out a wake up message to agencies and brands that Walmart is poised ot become one of their top methods of reaching their target customers. Of course, for brands this assumes their target customers are Walmart customers in some way, so also expect to see Walmart continue to expand their merchandise appeal to reach a broader customer segment. All of these actions represent ways Walmart can distinguish themselves from the largest retail media network out there – Amazon – and does it in a way that leverages channels Amazon doesn’t have today.
Okay. Is there anyplace that you don’t have to listen to ads? You fill your car up and there is “Gas Station TV” with blaring a repeatable loop at you that, if you have an empty tank, you have to listen to at least twice. Go to the restroom and there is either a board or a speaker hitting you with ads. Go to Walmart and there are TV’s…enough already!
At what point do we reach saturation? I am beginning to understand the attraction of over the ear earphones!