Walmart Data Ventures on April 28, 2026, launched Scintilla Media Data Feed, a new API-based product that allows advertisers to share Walmart's first-party operational and retail data with their agency and technology partners. The product, announced through Walmart Connect's resource pages, formalizes data access that had previously been fragmented across manual exports and custom integrations - a structural gap that has limited how media teams connect retail performance to campaign decisions.

The announcement, authored by Linda Lomelino, Vice President of Product at Walmart Data Ventures and Ads, positions the launch as a direct response to siloed planning workflows. According to Lomelino, "media teams and tech partners have been working with an incomplete picture, with only a slice of an advertiser's operational and retail data, creating silos in planning, optimization, and measurement."

What Scintilla Media Data Feed actually does

At its core, Scintilla Media Data Feed is an API feed that enables advertisers to grant approved agency and technology partners structured, near-real-time access to a curated set of Walmart data. Access is not open-ended. According to the announcement, advertisers can approve access to approximately 500 operational and retail data elements, including digital transactability, item attributes, and omni sales figures covering both store and online channels.

The architecture is deliberately controlled. Advertisers choose which partners receive access, and access is confined to a pre-curated set of elements rather than an unrestricted data export. This design reflects a tension that has defined retail media data partnerships broadly: retailers want to offer value to advertisers and their agencies, but they also need to prevent their proprietary data from flowing to competitors or being used in ways that undermine their own platform economics.

What the feed makes available is more granular than what most programmatic or media platforms typically receive. The data elements span omnichannel visibility, covering both physical store performance and digital transaction data. For a media planner working at a large consumer packaged goods company, that means campaign optimization decisions no longer depend exclusively on media-side signals like impressions and click-through rates. They can incorporate what is actually happening at the shelf.

According to Geoffrey Beliard, Principal Business Solutions Partner at Pacvue, "By integrating Walmart [retail and operational] data through Scintilla APIs, Pacvue enables advertisers to directly connect retail signals - like sales velocity, inventory levels, and nil pick rate - into their media activation strategies. This allows teams to build dynamic media rules, optimize campaigns in real time based on commerce performance, and ultimately drive more aligned, full-funnel business outcomes."

Pacvue is one of the first technology platforms to integrate with the feed. The company already manages Walmart DSP campaigns alongside onsite display and sponsored search as part of a broader Walmart Connect integration announced on the same day.

A live CPG case study: ZIP-code targeting driven by retail signals

Walmart included a detailed case study in the announcement, drawn from first-party data covering October 1 through December 31, 2025. A leading CPG brand used Scintilla data to identify share loss to a competitor in specific ZIP codes - markets that had previously gone unactivated in their media strategy. The brand then ran a geo-targeted offsite campaign through Walmart DSP, focused on reaching competitive buyers in those markets.

The results, according to Walmart, were:

  • 2.97% sales lift across targeted markets
  • 2.1 million households reached
  • 18.62x higher impression delivery in targeted markets
  • 72% win-back rate among returning buyers
  • 31% new buyer acquisition

These figures illustrate the specific kind of signal Scintilla is designed to surface. The competitive share-loss insight was not something a standard media dashboard would flag. It required item-level performance data, mapped to geography, that only a retailer with Walmart's omnichannel footprint and closed-loop measurement infrastructure could provide.

According to Bernie Che, Senior Director of Retailer Acceleration at Flywheel, "By understanding the full picture of item-level performance, we can identify opportunities where incremental ad investment will drive outsized returns." Flywheel, which operates as a specialist retail media partner within Omnicom's agency network, is among the early partners working with the feed.

Brian Kim, Senior Principal of Analytics and R&D at mPhasize, described what access to the data enabled in practice: "Scintilla Media Data Feed gave us structured access to Walmart store-level data that transformed how we analyze ecommerce media performance. We gained granular visibility at both the brand and product level, a clearer picture of cross-halo effects across Brick and Mortar and Dotcom, and the ability to measure ROI across onsite and offsite media with far greater precision - ultimately helping us make smarter next-dollar investment decisions for our clients."

The cross-halo measurement point is significant. Retail media measurement has long struggled to account for how an onsite ad affects offline behavior, or how an offsite impression influences a shopper who ultimately buys in-store. By providing both channel types within a single data feed, Scintilla gives analytics teams a more complete view than what is typically available through media platform reporting alone.

The predecessor: Scintilla Insights Activation

The April 28 launch is not Walmart Data Ventures' first product under the Scintilla brand. According to the announcement, Walmart launched Scintilla Insights Activation in 2024, a product designed to reduce the time between identifying an insight and acting on it. That earlier product focused on the internal workflow of turning data into an actionable media trigger - but the insights remained within the advertiser's own organization.

Scintilla Media Data Feed extends that capability outward. According to Lomelino, the new product "brings those insights directly to the platforms and partners advertisers already use to plan, optimize, and measure media." The distinction matters for how agencies operate. Rather than receiving periodic data exports or building custom one-off integrations, partners can now access signals within their existing tools and workflows through a standardized API.

This shift from manual processes to scalable API delivery has real operational implications. A media agency managing dozens of CPG brand accounts on Walmart cannot realistically build bespoke data pipelines for each. A standardized feed that delivers near-real-time signals into existing platforms changes the economics of that analysis.

Why this matters in the broader Walmart context

Walmart's advertising business has been growing rapidly. Walmart Connect reached 41% growth in the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2026, with total global advertising revenue reaching nearly $6.4 billion for the full fiscal year - a 46% increase. That growth trajectory has been driven partly by Walmart's ability to differentiate its retail media offering through the scale and quality of its first-party data, which covers transaction behavior from approximately 280 million weekly shoppers across physical stores and digital channels.

The launch of AI-powered advertising tools in January 2026 showed Walmart positioning its retail data as a structural competitive advantage, particularly against advertising platforms that lack underlying commerce data. Scintilla Media Data Feed extends that logic to agency partners, who can now incorporate Walmart's proprietary signals into campaign planning and optimization without needing to build custom data infrastructure.

For the marketing community, the structural question raised by this launch is about data portability. Retail media networks have traditionally kept their data closely guarded, which limits the ability of agencies to do cross-retailer analysis and planning. Scintilla's API-first approach moves in a different direction - not toward open data sharing, but toward controlled, permissioned access that the advertiser governs. The advertiser chooses which partners see what. That model preserves retailer data control while giving brand teams more flexibility to work with their preferred agency and technology stack.

The IAB Europe retail media guide from July 2025 noted that API-driven platforms like Pacvue and Kenshoo were already connecting via APIs to dozens of retail media networks based on performance signals. Scintilla formalizes and deepens that connection for Walmart specifically, by making operational data - not just ad performance data - available through the same programmatic infrastructure.

Walmart Connect's CTV expansion announced on May 2, 2026, through Connect Select, runs in parallel. That product gives advertisers programmatic access to Walmart DSP for offsite CTV buying, with Pacvue as a launch integration partner. The combination of retail signals through Scintilla and CTV execution through Connect Select creates a linked workflow: data surfaces a geographic opportunity, and the media activation - including offsite video - flows through the same partner infrastructure.

Technical architecture and partner access

The Scintilla Media Data Feed operates as a supplier-controlled access system. Advertisers - referred to in the announcement as suppliers - approve specific partners and specific data elements. This mirrors how clean room architectures typically work, though the announcement does not describe Scintilla explicitly as a clean room product. The key technical constraint is that access is structured and scoped rather than open-ended: partners receive a pre-curated set of elements, not a full data dump.

The approximately 500 accessible elements span multiple dimensions of retail performance. Digital transactability covers whether a product is shoppable online and through which fulfillment methods. Item attributes provide product-level metadata relevant to planning. Omni sales figures cover both Walmart.com and physical store transactions - the closed-loop measurement component that distinguishes a retailer's data from what any third-party attribution tool can reconstruct.

The near-real-time access characteristic is technically consequential. Retail media campaigns often operate on lagging data because the integration between point-of-sale systems, media platforms, and agency reporting tools is slow and manual. A feed that delivers signals at near-real-time cadence enables bid strategy adjustments and audience targeting decisions that would not be possible with weekly or monthly exports.

Partners described in the announcement include agencies, tech platforms, and third-party providers. Pacvue and Flywheel (the Omnicom-aligned specialist) are named explicitly. mPhasize is identified as an analytics partner. The partner directory that Walmart Connect maintains as part of its broader ecosystem - launched in December 2023 - provides the certification infrastructure that governs which technology partners are eligible to connect.

Signals, not just metrics

The distinction between retail signals and media metrics runs through Walmart's framing of Scintilla. Metrics are what ad platforms produce: impressions, clicks, attributed conversions. Signals are what happen in the commerce layer: which products are moving, where inventory is constrained, which SKUs are losing share to competitors, which ZIP codes are underperforming relative to potential. The argument embedded in the Scintilla launch is that media decisions made without access to commerce signals are structurally incomplete.

That argument has been gaining traction across the retail media landscape. Retail media partnerships have been evolvingas brands increasingly work across multiple networks and demand more connected measurement. The IAB Australia Commerce and Retail Media Summit in July 2025 surfaced consistent themes around measurement serving as a proxy for broader marketing investment effectiveness - an aspiration that requires exactly the kind of data Scintilla is designed to provide.

What remains to be seen is how consistently advertisers will exercise the data-sharing permissions that Scintilla enables. The value of the system depends on brands actually approving agency access, agencies actually incorporating the signals into planning workflows, and technology platforms building the integrations that make those signals actionable. Pacvue's early integration and the CPG case study suggest that at least some of that workflow is already functional, but broad adoption across the advertiser base requires each of those steps to work reliably at scale.

Timeline

  • 2021 - Walmart formally relaunches its media business as Walmart Connect, building a retail media infrastructure covering onsite ads, DOOH, and first-party data integrations
  • December 5, 2023 - Walmart Connect launches a Partner Network Directory, establishing certification infrastructure for agency and technology partners
  • 2024 - Walmart Data Ventures launches Scintilla Insights Activation, reducing the gap from insights to activation within advertiser organizations
  • January 6, 2026 - Walmart Connect announces AI advertising tools including a conversational advertising assistant for Sponsored Search campaigns and Sparky integration
  • February 19, 2026 - Walmart reports Q4 FY26 earnings: Walmart Connect grows 41%, global advertising revenue reaches nearly $6.4 billion for the full fiscal year
  • March 21, 2026 - Reddit Ads added to Pacvue's Commerce Operating System, expanding the platform's cross-retailer coverage to over 100 networks
  • October 1 - December 31, 2025 - CPG brand uses Scintilla data in a geo-targeted Walmart DSP campaign, achieving 2.97% sales lift across targeted markets and 72% win-back rate (results disclosed in April 2026 announcement)
  • April 28, 2026 - Walmart Data Ventures launches Scintilla Media Data Feed, a new API feed providing advertisers and their approved agency and technology partners with access to approximately 500 retail and operational data elements, with Pacvue, Flywheel, and mPhasize among early integration partners
  • May 2, 2026 - Walmart Connect announces Connect Select, opening programmatic CTV access to all advertisers, with Pacvue as a launch integration partner for Walmart DSP

Summary

Who: Walmart Data Ventures, the data commercialization arm of Walmart, with involvement from Walmart Connect. Early integration partners include Pacvue, Flywheel (an Omnicom-aligned specialist), and mPhasize. The announcement was authored by Linda Lomelino, Vice President of Product, Data Ventures and Ads at Walmart.

What: The launch of Scintilla Media Data Feed, an API product that allows advertisers to grant their approved agency and technology partners structured access to approximately 500 Walmart operational and retail data elements, including digital transactability, item attributes, and omni sales figures covering both physical store and online channels. The product enables near-real-time signal delivery into partners' existing media planning and optimization tools.

When: Announced April 28, 2026. The product builds on Scintilla Insights Activation, launched in 2024. The CPG case study cited in the announcement covers first-party data from October 1 through December 31, 2025.

Where: The product operates within the Walmart ecosystem, covering Walmart's omnichannel retail data from its U.S. store and digital operations. Access is managed through Walmart's existing partner certification infrastructure. Technology partner integrations are delivered through API connections into platforms such as Pacvue.

Why: The launch addresses a structural problem in retail media planning: media agencies and technology partners have historically operated with incomplete visibility into an advertiser's operational performance at Walmart, forcing siloed planning and limiting the ability to connect media decisions to commerce outcomes. Scintilla Media Data Feed creates a permissioned, scalable data bridge between Walmart's retail signals and the platforms where media activation decisions are made.

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