Walmart this week announced the new name for its media business: Walmart Connect. Walmart Connect will focus on 3 offerings: physical DOOH screens, data integrations, and digital retail ads.
This is a big step from Walmart to increase competition against Amazon and Google. Last year, Walmart Media Group (now Walmart Connect) launched an ad platform, and Performance Dashboards for Display and Sponsored Products campaigns, Shopify merchants were able to sell their products on Walmart.com.
DOOH screens
Walmart says it has 170,000 digital screens across 4,500+ stores and it will allow advertisers to reach Walmart’s millions of customers who shop in its physical stores each week, via in-store TV walls and self-checkout screens. According to Walmart, the ads can be delivered with date, time, and geographic specificity.
Digital retail ads
Walmart Connect is offering display and search ads on Walmart.com and in the Walmart App.
First-party data selling
This week, Walmart announced that is selling first-party shopper data to drive media performance for advertisers outside of Walmart’s proprietary sites. Walmart Connect did a partnership with The Trade Desk, ane expects its supply partners will start using the platform with Walmart data.
“Walmart is pioneering a new frontier in digital advertising, providing marketers with access to shopper data for the first time, in a way that both protects consumer privacy and improves the consumer experience,” said Jeff Green, CEO, and co-founder, The Trade Desk. “In doing so, marketers will be able to create much more refined, relevant, and measurable advertising campaigns, which can be adapted on-the-fly to changing circumstances and real-time performance. We are thrilled to be working with Walmart to bring this vision to life.”