Advertising on Walmart Marketplace: Updated Guide for 2021

In order to get the most value from your Walmart.com advertisements, Marsten recommends making careful use of the automated campaigns:

Source: Walmart 201: How to Scale Your Walmart Sales (Webinar Deck Slide) Amazon might have the lion’s share of inventory and sellers in the online marketplace space, but they’re not the only major player on the block. Despite some early challenges, Walmart Marketplace made great strides in 2020 and the first half of 2021, with more exciting updates on the near horizon. 

• 90% of America shops at Walmart
• Walmart serves 150 million customers each week between their stores and website
• Walmart is the #1 U.S. retailer, #1 online grocer, and #2 ecommerce platform

“Automated campaigns tend to perform better over time than manual campaigns, but you need to have at least 10 SKUs in the product group and start by controlling it with minimum bid and ad budgets.”
Image Source: https://www.walmartconnect.com/sponsored-products
Boosts new seller performance. New sellers and products can leverage digital advertising to boost their early sales performance.

Why should you advertise on Walmart.com?

Image Source: https://www.walmartconnect.com/sponsored-products
— Stuart Clay, Associate Director of Marketplace Strategic Services at Tinuiti
These are CPC ads that appear within the first three pages of search results, driving traffic to relevant Walmart product detail pages. The advertiser controls how much they spend by setting budgets and bids, and only pays when a user clicks on the ads. These Walmart.com ads are available for both manual and automatic ad campaigns
If you’re patient, you can set aside an advertising budget and consider it a test of a couple of thousand dollars’ worth of ads. It probably won’t perform as well as Amazon or Google, but it will serve as a good benchmark for future performance. Be realistic with your expectations and don’t simply copy over content from different channels. Create ad content unique to Walmart.com.
Carousels can play a pivotal role in the success of your Walmart advertising campaign, whatever your goals may be, including maintaining your existing visibility, aiming to capture new customers, promotion of new or seasonal items, and more.

Walmart.com Ad Types

To be eligible for search in-grid ad placement, the store and/or grocery products you wish to advertise must already surface organically within the first 128 search result positions, due to this ad type’s heavy reliance on relevancy. If your product is truly relevant for a search, chances are you’re already showing within these 128 results, with advertising offering a fast track to even greater visibility.

Editor’s Note: This post was originally published by Tara Johnson in January 2020 and has been updated for freshness, accuracy, and comprehensiveness.

This is a coveted, highly competitive placement that is only available for automatic campaigns (not manual). The Buy Box can be found on the product detail page (PDP) for items that are a relevant alternative to the product shoppers are viewing, or items that are complementary to the product shoppers are viewing (ie. shampoo on a conditioner page).

1. Walmart Sponsored Products – Search In-Grid Results

Take advantage of seasonal spikes. Seasonal products—to include holiday candy and decorations, swimwear, patio furniture, and more—will be able to take advantage of seasonality spikes and respond faster to changes.

Take advantage of seasonal spikes. Seasonal products—to include holiday candy and decorations, swimwear, patio furniture, and more—will be able to take advantage of seasonality spikes and respond faster to changes.

Take advantage of seasonal spikes. Seasonal products—to include holiday candy and decorations, swimwear, patio furniture, and more—will be able to take advantage of seasonality spikes and respond faster to changes.

Take advantage of seasonal spikes. Seasonal products—to include holiday candy and decorations, swimwear, patio furniture, and more—will be able to take advantage of seasonality spikes and respond faster to changes.

The minimum campaign spend for this ad type is either 0 for the total length of the campaign, and/or a daily minimum of . Bear in mind that this isn’t how much you will actually spend, but what Walmart has set as the minimum that will be entered into the platform.
While Walmart.com doesn’t have as many ad types available for retailers as Amazon.com, there is still an impressive array of valuable sponsored product and onsite and offsite display ad options to enhance your visibility.

5. Walmart Offsite Display Advertising

Image Source: https://www.walmartconnect.com/sponsored-products

The reasoning behind sellers increasingly advertising on Walmart Marketplace can be easily explained by those numbers alone, but the ‘how’ in doing so effectively requires a thoughtfully planned and executed Walmart advertising strategy.

How different is advertising on Walmart.com?

Ready to expand beyond Amazon advertising, or take your existing Walmart Marketplace strategy to the next level? Contact us today to learn more about how Tinuiti’s marketplace team can help you secure your piece of the Walmart pie through the industry’s most comprehensive Walmart marketing program.
In a recent webinar session focused on scaling your Walmart sales, presented by Tinuiti’s Stuart Clay and Walmart Connect’s Matthew Smith, Smith shared the following (Sources: Walmart first-party data, 2019, 2020, 2021):

• On Walmart.com, organic listings are impacted by advertising performance. You can “push” a product to higher organic listings if you have ads for the same product that get clicks and views

• Most brands on Walmart.com aren’t given their own exclusive page like they are on other ecommerce platforms. If you’re on a product detail page and you click a brand, the site will do a Google search for that term and send you to the results page–as opposed to Amazon, which sends you to the brand page

• Search functionality isn’t as robust on Walmart.com as it is on other online marketplaces, and it is more difficult to be discovered organically if you don’t have boosters like the 2-day shipping badge

What are some Walmart.com advertising best practices?

Brands are also given an opportunity to reach potential shoppers beyond Walmart’s digital properties. In addition to the host of benefits onsite display ads offer, offsite display ads help capture customers across the greater web, including through social media.

Image Source: https://www.walmartconnect.com/display-products

Some of Walmart’s popular Carousel ad placements include:

Here are some differences that Elizabeth Marsten, Sr. Director of Strategic Marketplace Services at Tinuiti, noted:
Clay further notes that manual campaigns are essential to driving strategy and controlling return as there are currently no negative keywords in Walmart.com advertising. “If we have product parity across auto and manual, we always want to make sure that manual is bid higher and traffic is directed there since we have more control with the keywords.”

Looking Forward with Walmart Connect

Aid struggling SKUs. Low-performing SKUs on Walmart.com can get a much-needed increase in visibility through effective, targeted ads.

“We’re pretty confident that we’re going to be able to grow this business to become one of the top 10 advertising platforms in the U.S. over the next few years.”

• As Walmart Connect’s Matthew Smith explained in a recent webinar, the role of Walmart Connect is to stay at the center of the shopper journey, wherever that shopper is

• Closed-loop measurement helps advertisers better understand post-exposure effects on sales, new buyer acquisition, conversion lifts, and overall ROAS

• With Walmart unifying the Walmart.com and Online Pickup & Delivery ecosystems, the opportunity for search to result in increased online and in-store sales only continues to climb

• Walmart will offer advertisers unique opportunities to reach in-store shoppers through digital media, including ads on self-checkout screens, and ads on the TV screen walls. Because these ads will be managed at the store level, they’ll be able to take consideration of things like whether a particular product is in-stock at the time of ad delivery. This can help ensure you aren’t spending valuable advertising dollars piquing the interest of shoppers who are unable to make a purchase then and there

• Self-serve display ads are coming to Walmart Connect later this year, a platform aimed at enhancing “connections between brands and customers at scale.” Among the primary benefits the self-serve platform brings is scalability for advertisers big, small, and every size in between. Walmart notes: “While we expect our largest suppliers to adopt automation technology fastest, we are building this new platform to scale for Marketplace sellers and suppliers of all sizes.”

Walmart Partners with The Trade Desk

Due largely to a combination of pandemic-related effects on shopping, its significant physical footprint—Walmart is the largest retailer in the US, after all, with more than 4,700 stores across the country—and the massive corporate effort behind building up its digital presence, Walmart’s “online sales grew 79% for its fiscal year 2021, which ended Jan. 29.” The shoppers are there, and they’re not just browsing or comparison shopping; they’re adding to their virtual cart.

Carousel ads appear in a variety of locations across Walmart.com, from the homepage to product level pages, with differing availability for manual campaigns and automatic campaigns. All carousel types are available for automatic campaigns, while only the search carousel is available for manual campaigns.

This ad type presents a unique opportunity to elevate brand recognition, and awareness of the variety of items available within your product lineup. Brand Amplifier placements feature your logo, custom headlines, and up to 3 individual SKUs, appearing above the returned search results. Shoppers are directed to a manual shelf, search, or browse page from SBAs, with minimum bids for this placement currently set at .00.

The Tinuiti Advantage to Advertising on Walmart Marketplace

New to selling on the Walmart Marketplace? Start with our beginner’s guide.

SBA (Search Brand Amplifier) is a branded group of products that appears at the top of a search result listing for specific keywords. Much like with display packages, this placement is also managed by the Walmart Connect team.

• As of May 2021, Tinuiti is privileged to be just 1 of 8 Walmart Advertising API partners

• As a Walmart partner, Tinuiti is able to provide a host of benefits to our clients, including:
  • Campaign management efficiencies
  • Exclusive access to beta opportunities
  • Advanced escalation resources
  • Training and enablement
  • …and more!

When Walmart rebranded Walmart Media Group to Walmart Connect in January 2021, there was more to the change than a fresh new name. As explored in more detail in our What is Walmart Connect? blog post, the rebranding is reflective of “Walmart’s investment in becoming one of the world’s leading omnichannel advertising businesses.” Many of these changes are already in motion…

Tinuiti’s marketplace team specializes in a holistic approach to Walmart advertising, which will only become more important as advertising opportunities continue to grow. With seller success at the foundation of every decision we make—coupled with our deep knowledge and understanding of Walmart’s advertising capabilities—we thoughtfully work to increase your exposure on and off-site, regularly adjusting campaigns as needed based on performance.

Support organic presence. Paid advertising on Walmart.com can assist your organic presence and increase discoverability and visibility.
Unlike search in-grid ads, the items you wish to promote through Carousels do not have to appear in the top 128 organic listings.
Tinuiti’s Marketplace Team was founded in 2007, bringing more than 14 years of marketplace and advertising experience to the table with every campaign we manage. Thanks to the capabilities made possible through Tinuiti’s proprietary MobiusX technology, our best in-class team is armed with the best in-class AI-enabled ecommerce activation tool.
“First and foremost, we need data and we need learnings, and this is why we have our autos (automatic campaigns) set at the foundation. We leverage our autos for more placements, more opportunities to perform, and more opportunities to generate performance data. We then leverage that performance data to identify key strategic products to break out into manual (keyword) targeted campaigns.” Amazon is still the undisputed ecommerce leader, but Walmart.com has several things going for it that make it a good investment for retailers looking to expand and diversify.