Walmart’s ecommerce business is growing at twice the rate of Amazon’s, with U.S. online sales increasing around 20% annually compared to Amazon’s 10%. This rapid growth is fueled by Walmart’s reinvention as a tech-forward retail powerhouse — leveraging its 5,000+ store footprint as fulfillment hubs, expanding its third-party marketplace, and investing heavily in logistics and automation.  

While Amazon still leads in total ecommerce sales, Walmart is closing the gap quickly and outpacing its rival in critical areas like grocery delivery and advertising growth. For brands, that means now is the time to invest in Walmart Connect — before your competitors do.

Why Walmart Connect?

If you’ve been waiting for Walmart to have more traffic to start advertising on it, you’re already missing out.  

Walmart’s growth in ecommerce cannot be understated. In an ecosystem that was once viewed as “Amazon and everyone else,” Walmart has leveraged its brand dominance in recent years to surpass online shopping stalwarts like eBay and Etsy.  

And while Amazon’s 2024 ecommerce sales were nearly triple those of Walmart, Target, and Costco — who collectively make up the “The Big Four” of mass merchants in North America — Walmart’s sales were more than triple those of Target and Costco combined.  

Due to Walmart’s established (and growing) presence in online shopping, its value as an ad platform creates a wealth of opportunities for brands looking to expand beyond Amazon.  

By leveraging Walmart Connect’s various advertising solutions, brands can reach new customers at scale while staying ahead of the curve in a rapidly expanding marketplace.

Expand Your Reach

Advertising with Walmart Connect puts your brand in front of millions of potential customers actively searching, browsing, and shopping for products across the retail giant’s owned channels — website, app, and in-store digital. Whereas Amazon is mostly a digital play, Walmart’s omnichannel approach to retail also allows advertisers to holistically track their campaign’s impact online and offline (i.e., closed-loop measurement).  

Walmart’s network of partner websites casts an even wider net for advertisers, beyond the retailer’s ecommerce platform and 4,615 US stores. Walmart Connect is designed to help brands enhance their visibility and drive sales by reaching consumers across their shopping journey — including those who are not actively on Walmart platforms.  

Lower Competition, Lower Costs

One of the biggest advantages of running ads on Walmart Connect is lower competition. Compared to Amazon’s crowded advertising space, Walmart’s platform is less saturated, which often translates into lower cost-per-click (CPC).  

Compared to Amazon, Walmart Connect also has fewer ad placements leading to a less cluttered ad experience.

For brands, this means your ad budget can stretch further, delivering more impactful impressions and clicks for the same spend. And as more online shoppers turn to Walmart, the opportunity will only continue to grow.  

In fact, according to Marketplace Pulse, "...more than half of the sales volume on the Amazon marketplace comes from sellers who started selling more than five years ago." So, the sooner you start positioning your brand on Walmart today, the better your results will be in the future.  

The cost-saving element of less competition, combined with having cleaner, more prominent ad placements, leads to seamless customer experiences, reaching consumers wherever they are with personalized, timely ads.

Credibility and Trust

Let’s not forget the power of the Walmart brand. As one of the most trusted and recognizable names in retail, Walmart attracts a loyal customer base that’s ready to buy (i.e., high-intent shoppers).  

Advertising through Walmart Connect allows your brand to benefit from that trust and reputation, aligning your products with a major retailer that consumers already know and depend on. This credibility can boost conversion rates and help drive sales at a lower cost.

Walmart Connect Solutions

If you’re still thinking “Walmart Connect’s technology is still in beta or early stage” — it’s time to catch up.  

Walmart Connect has matured fast. With self-serve tools, in-store attribution, programmatic buying (via Walmart DSP), and integrations with retail media optimization platforms like Quartile, advertisers can now run full-funnel, high-performance campaigns with far more precision than in years past.  

In fact, Walmart Connect offers a full range of ad placement solutions designed to help brands get discovered by shoppers as they browse and search.  

These solutions include:

• Sponsored Search: These cost-per-click (CPC) ads appear on Walmart.com’s search results, category, and product detail pages. They help boost visibility for products when shoppers are actively browsing or searching. Placement is based on keyword targeting, bidding strategy, and relevance. These include Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brand, and Sponsored Video variations.

• Onsite Display: Strategic placements on Walmart.com and the Walmart mobile app, geared to engage customers across the sales funnel. Onsite Display ads are targeted based on customers’ omnichannel Walmart history, and include prominent placements on Walmart’s homepage, category pages, and even custom-built brand pages.

• Offsite Media: Ads that extend into Walmart’s network of media partnerships, including major retail websites, social media networks, and even popular podcasts. Offside Media ads allow you to precisely target your desired audiences by tapping into Walmart’s first-party customer data.  

• In-store: Inspire on-the-spot purchase decisions with In-store ads and experiences that encourage customers to buy your products while shopping at Walmart locations. Ads are displayed on self-checkout screens or in-store TV screens, and can also be triggered through your mobile app to deliver a real-time omnichannel shopping experience.

• Brand Shop and Shelf: Eligible Walmart suppliers and marketplace brand owners can build, launch, and manage their own Brand Shop and Shelf, a virtual storefront and landing page experience via the Walmart site or app. Amplify your media campaigns, boost brand awareness, and drive sales.  

How Does Targeting Work?

When it comes to targeting, Walmart Connect offers both automated and manual options.  

Automated targeting uses Walmart’s proprietary algorithm to decide where and when your ads should appear based on first-party data, shopper behavior, and relevancy.  

Manual targeting allows advertisers to select specific keywords and placements.

While automated targeting is ideal for brands looking to start utilizing Walmart Connect services and gather insights, more advanced, strategic advertisers will usually leverage manually targeted ads for greater control.  

Manual ads, when paired with AI-powered bidding automation trained on historical and real time data (like Quartile), enable even greater precision and efficiency.  

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The Importance of Product Listing Optimization

Simply put: You can’t pay your way to the top on Walmart Connect. You need strong listings.  

Before you can advertise using Walmart Connect, it’s crucial to ensure your product listings meet Walmart’s content quality standards. Walmart Connect requires ads and product pages to pass quality thresholds to be eligible for publishing — meaning clear images, detailed descriptions, and accurate attributes are required to get started.  

That also means it's not as easy as just copy-and-pasting your Amazon listing content over to Walmart Connect.  

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Optimizing your product listings isn’t just a checkbox for ad eligibility — it’s foundational to campaign success. High-quality listings improve organic visibility and increase conversion rates once a shopper clicks through your ad.

Why Haven’t You Started Advertising on Walmart Connect?  

Advertising with Walmart Connect isn’t about shifting budget over from Amazon — it’s about tapping into a mass ecosystem of loyal, high-intent shoppers. It’s also not a channel you can ignore any longer.  

Walmart Connect’s unique advertising solutions are already empowering brands to reach customers at every stage of the shopping journey, from search to checkout, across the retail giant’s omnichannel experience.  

By taking advantage of lower CPCs, less competition, and the loyalty inherent in the Walmart name, brands can unlock tremendous revenue and growth opportunities today.  

And with the right strategy — including the best in AI-powered automation and smart, managed service campaign management — you can make Walmart Connect a stalwart of your retail media mix.

If you’re already a Quartile client, discuss adding Walmart Connect with your account team. One of our customers, Best Choice Products, did exactly that and achieved remarkable results including a +50% increase in total sales YoY while improving their Walmart Connect ROAS by 27%.  

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