Walmart Connect: Building Meaningful Shopping Experiences Between Suppliers & Our Customers

Now is an incredibly transformative time in retail. Customers’ needs and how they choose to shop are rapidly evolving, and the opportunities to serve them are infinite. All of us across Walmart are focused on meeting our customers wherever and however they want to shop. At Walmart Connect, the U.S. arm of Walmart’s global advertising business, we take what makes Walmart great – like our company’s commitment to saving customers’ time and money – and apply those values to create meaningful shopping experiences between our customers, suppliers and sellers.

Coming off the heels of Walmart’s latest earnings call – where the successes of our global ad business, including Walmart Connect, were featured – I want to share more about the connections we make and what’s ahead for us this year.

The meaning of meaningful connections

Every year, 90% of American households rely on Walmart for a range of products from must-buy brands, both large and small. And every week, more than 150 million customers shop with us in-store or online. Our mission at Walmart Connect is to help brands and sellers meaningfully connect with these customers on their shopping journey – wherever that occurs – to find the right product or discover a new one.

How these meaningful connections happen can occur in a number of ways: In one of our stores, on our app or website, across the internet or even on social media. Customers can discover and purchase new products through our search and native display ads, or through creative in-store or social experiences. For example, football fans on TikTok may have seen our #GetTheWChallenge to inspire their shopping for the Big Game. During the holidays, customers discovered new products through Walmart’s Gift Finder AR experience or purchased ingredients through co-created shoppable Pinterest recipes. Walmart Connect’s full-funnel suite of omnichannel solutions are truly relevant and purposeful for our shared customer – the shopper.

Walmart Connect

Our journey to become a top ad platform

The power of these connections and shopping experiences, combined with Walmart’s scale and reach with U.S. shoppers in stores and online, is propelling Walmart Connect to become a top advertising platform. Here’s what we’re focusing on this year:

First, we are continuing to improve and innovate new ways for suppliers and sellers to connect with customers throughout the shopper journey.

• This includes expanded touchpoints to reach customers wherever they are with new ad formats, like CTV and video, as well as omni experiences – such as optimizing how brands can showcase themselves at self-checkout screens, TV Walls, in-store events and sampling. 
• And by the end of this year, we will be moving toward new premium advertising experiences on Walmart.com, including testing new onsite ad units and video.
• Most importantly, all of these offerings are fueled by our proprietary shopper insights to make sure these experiences are relevant and helpful to our customers.

Second, we are unlocking growth for suppliers and sellers of all sizes through automation.

• We are making it faster, easier, and more efficient for brands to launch and manage display campaigns on Walmart.com all on their own. We recently rolled out Display Self-Serve to our first phase of advertisers, giving them more speed, flexibility and control with their display campaigns.
• We are expanding the Walmart Platform Partner program so suppliers and sellers have more options to find the right expert to scale, automate, and optimize their search campaigns. New to our program is Jungle Scout, who officially joined us just this month.
• Our recently launched Walmart Demand Side Platform (DSP) – an automated system for advertisers to buy offsite inventory in one spot – continues to roll out to more advertisers.

Finally, we are committed to exceeding advertiser performance goals, by leaning into our core offerings through a combination of innovation and evolution.

• Search and targeting are essential to any omni campaign. That’s why one of our biggest areas of focus this year is improving targeting and search capabilities – including moving to second-price auction – to deliver more impact to advertisers and better experiences for our customers.   
• We’ll continue to scale our One Walmart approach, which is helping suppliers unlock the full power of Walmart through integrated planning across merchandising, site operations, marketing and Walmart Connect – like this Super Bowl campaign for Pepsi or this Pride Month initiative with Skittles.
• And we are expanding measurement capabilities for all our offerings – including in-store placements – to drive accountable results and a stronger end-to-end offering.

Our closed-loop, omnichannel solutions help advertisers capitalize on Walmart’s deep customer insights to our physical and digital reach across the U.S. We’re laser-focused on evolving Walmart Connect’s solutions to help advertisers make every media moment a retail moment, by connecting with customers in a meaningful way at any point in their shopping journey. The future of Walmart Connect is brighter than ever and I’m excited about what we’re creating with our suppliers, sellers and partners to stand at the forefront of retail media – and transform the shopping experience for Walmart customers.