Want to know how to spend your next $1?
Don’t waste another dime on bloated channel reporting and vanity metrics.
Don’t waste another dime on bloated channel reporting and vanity metrics.
Walmart's retail media network is pushing beyond its own marketplace through Innovation Partners.
A Walmart ad on TikTok. (Photo courtesy of Walmart)
Buy an ad from Walmart, run it on TikTok.
That’s one path that will become possible through Walmart’s advertising business, thanks to a series of new video-centric tie-ups announced on Tuesday.
Walmart Connect rolled out a new program called Innovation Partners with some high-profile names in social media, live shopping and streaming like TikTok, Roku and Snap.
Through this initiative, brands will be able to use Walmart Connect to run ads on platforms beyond Walmart’s ecommerce marketplace and other owned channels. The idea is that brands can combine the first-party data Walmart receives through shopper transactions and measurement tools from Walmart Connect with the audience of these platforms to reach new buyers.
Walmart views the partnerships announced on Tuesday as “test and learn” opportunities for the holidays, and is already working with brands like J&J, P&G and Samsung.
“The newly expanded offering includes additional touchpoints and channels to reach customers wherever they are with new ad formats,” Seth Dallaire, Executive Vice President and Chief Revenue Officer, Walmart US, wrote in an announcement. “Together, we will work with each partner to more deeply connect advertisers with customers throughout key moments in the shopper journey in order to provide the best solutions for advertisers.”
Here’s a look at the partnerships with each platform:
A Walmart ad on TikTok. (Courtesy of Walmart Connect)
Walmart Connect said it has a “first-to-market” pilot with the short-form video app that will allow Walmart advertisers to run ads on TikTok. This combines TikTok’s ad format, which offers a sound-on, full-screen video ad that runs in a user’s feed, with targeting and measurement capabilities from Walmart.
A Walmart ad on Snapchat. (Courtesy of Walmart Connect)
Through this partnership, advertisers will be able to buy Snapchat ads and combine them with Walmart Connect’s geo-based measurement of omnichannel sales lift. It will be available for Snap Ads, Collection Ads and Snap AR.
A Walmart ad on Firework. (Courtesy of Walmart Connect)
Firework’s technology allows brands and retailers to embed shoppable livestreams on their own websites. Through this partnership, brands will be able to fund and run livestreams and short shoppable videos on Walmart.com/live. Through this partnership, Walmart said it is testing how brands can use Firework to create “premium, engaging, mobile-first video experiences.” Testing is underway with J&J and P&G.
A TalkShopLive livestream. (Courtesy of Walmart Connect)
Walmart’s early forays into livestreaming have come through an existing partnership with TalkShopLive, which offers an emebeddable video player that is built to run QVC-for-the-internet-style events. With Walmart Connect, it is working to help brands extend livestreams across Walmart.com/live, TalkShopLive’s platform, brand and publisher sites and other sites across the web. The test here lies in how brands can amplify their content, and scale. Already, J&J, P&G, and Samsung have used it to run livestreams.
A shoppable Walmart ad on Roku. (Courtesy of Walmart Connect)
Walmart and Roku recently made big news with a partnership that will bring shoppable ads to streaming TV, where viewers can make purchases directly from their screen using a remote, and then get products delivered that are fulfilled by Walmart. This partnership with Walmart Connect and Roku Advertising is the vehicle by which the ads themselves will be purchased, with Walmart Connect serving ads through the Roku platform, and providing measurement tools to brands.
This is just the latest development from Walmart Connect, which was revealed to be a $2 billion business for Walmart in its last fiscal year, and grew 30% in the most recent quarter that ended in July. In recent weeks, Walmart Connect has also:
Walmart is seeking to make advertising a key part of its digital business. As it grows an ecommerce channel that has more products and attracts more shoppers, advertising becomes more important to stand out, boosting Connect.
“The relationship between digital growth, marketplace growth, advertising is something that we’re trying to take advantage of,” CEO Doug McMillon said on the company's most recent earnings call.
This comes at a time when the first-party data-centered approaches of retail media networks, which allow retailers to introduce advertising to their stores, are becoming more attractive following Apple’s App Tracking Transparency updates that made attribution more difficult in iOS 14.5.
With Walmart Connect's latest partnerships, the nation's largest retailer is sending a signal that it wants to not only to run ads on its own properties, but also take steps to become a full-on adtech network that serves ads across the web. In doing so, the partnerships announced Tuesday show that it is making room for data-driven digital commerce tactics to enter the more entertainment-style social content that is currently proliferating.
While the platforms have experimented with social commerce that embeds checkout directly on platforms, many of the approaches here center ads that direct to sites off-platform to finalize a purchase. Two of the tests ahead lie in determining whether these ads can seamlessly fit into existing viewing experiences on these platforms, and whether Walmart's tools prove to make them effective in targeting audiences and driving conversions.
While much learning remains, it appears brands and retailers are coming to an understanding that a strategy for winning in a world of video-forward social content is not built around a single ecommerce marketplace, but rather the ability to reach consumers where they watch.
Walmart's third-party marketplace is reducing commission rates for 90 days.
Walmart's Marketplace is growing. (Photo courtesy of Walmart)
To kick off 2023, Walmart’s third-party marketplace is continuing to make moves to expand the number of sellers on the platform with a savings incentive.
The news: Starting this week, Walmart Marketplace is running a Seller Savings promotion for 90 days that provides new sellers with a 25% commission rate reduction. This allows sellers to try new tools including:
Growing the Marketplace: Walmart’s third-party marketplace has been a focus area of expansion efforts from the world’s largest retailer, and it showed results in 2022. In the company’s most recent earnings report, executives said the Marketplace’s SKU count increased by 50% to 370 million SKUs, and it onboarded 8,000 new sellers in the quarter.
Along with services such as fulfillment and advertising, Walmart said it is continuing to upgrade its experience for sellers, including introducing a faster onboarding process. In September, the company also provided access to an advertising tool that boosts products to the top of search results called Search Brand Amplifier, and provided automatic onboarding to Walmart's ad portal upon launch. In a move to grow internationally, the company opened the Marketplace to Canadian sellers.
The flywheel spins: For Walmart, the Marketplace is a key part of its bid to grow ecommerce. Adding more sellers allows the retailer to expand the assortment of items available on the platform. This helps the company offer more items that keep shoppers coming back, and keep prices down. At the same time, Walmart is working to engage more repeat customers through its Walmart+ membership program. A bigger Marketplace also bolsters the importance of advertising on Walmart ecommerce, as brands seek ways to stand out on an ever-growing platform.
“We're scaling our newer businesses and connecting them to our larger, established retail businesses, primarily by how we design digital interactions,” Walmart CEO Doug McMillon told analysts on the earnings call. “One example is how our growth in ecommerce, especially the marketplace, fuels our ad business. More items and sellers drive GMV and improved customer satisfaction. And it also drives success in advertising. They're mutually reinforcing.”
What it means for marketplaces: Any discussion of third-party marketplaces would be incomplete without mention of Amazon, which pioneered the model and continues to operate a juggernaut through its Fulfillment by Amazon program. However, Walmart's emergence is one of the clearer signals that sellers are increasingly looking to have a presence across multiple marketplaces. Increasingly, ecommerce platforms are marketing to sellers, just as they are to consumers.