Walmart is thinking big.
After a year during which the world’s largest retailer doubled ad revenue, Walmart is partnering with advertising technology company The Trade Desk to build a new advertising platform. The goal? To make Walmart an even bigger player in the advertising landscape than it is today, and take on rival Amazon as an advertising leader. Read on to learn more.
What’s In A Name?
The initiative begins with a name change. Janey Whiteside, chief consumer officer at Walmart, has announced that the retailer is rebranding its media business. Goodbye Walmart Media Group. Hello Walmart Connect. The new name hints at the sea changes in Walmart’s approach to advertising, including an expansion that links the retailer’s advertising business to in-store media.
Walmart Connect
It’s a canny move. While many retailers ignore their physical properties by conflating digital with online-only, Walmart is integrating digital with brick-and-mortar, in the process competing with Amazon’s muscular online presence. According to Reuters, the retailer will sell ads on more than 170,000 screens—including televisions and self-checkout kiosk screens—located inside more than 4,500 U.S. stores. Mark Boidman, managing director and head of media and tech services at the independent investment bank and financial services company PJ Solomon, believes the plan has promise. He notes:
The ability to use on-premise media, and in particular digital signage and digital out-of-home media, allows brands and retailers to be reactive and provide contextually relevant content and advertising, Think coffee promotions in the morning or marketing hot chocolate or snow shovels ahead of a big snow storm.
That means the messaging can’t — and won’t — be one-size fits all. After all, shoppers in Florida are unlikely to relate to snow shovel ads at any time. Walmart understands this; as reported in Ad Age, brand messages will be delivered specific to date, time, and geography.
Part of Walmart’s initiative also capitalizes on the company’s access to in-store and online shopper data. As the Wall Street Journal reports, this trove of data may well give Walmart’s demand-side platform an advantage over that of rival ad sellers, and help the company effectively compete for a bigger share of marketer dollars.
Implications of Walmart Connect for Brands
Walmart wants to share its data riches — with brands. By doing so, Walmart creates a win-win situation in which consumer needs are anticipated and marketers can remain agile in the face of changing need. “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,” Jeff Green, CEO and co-founder of The Trade Desk, noted in a statement. “In doing so, marketers will be able to create much more refined, relevant and measurable advertising campaigns, which can be adapted on the fly.”
What would that adaptation look like? For starters, marketers can target ads to audiences based on data about shopping behavior. In addition, advertisers can monitor sales in brick-and-mortar Walmart stores in real time, subsequently tweaking marketing campaigns as needed.
“We have this unparalleled source of data that we can bring to bear,” Whiteside says. “Who else can actually tell you if a customer saw something online and then a week later, physically bought it in the store?”
Smarter Advertising across the Web
Walmart isn’t just sharing data with brands available in Walmart stores. The company’s demand-side platform will allow brands not even sold at Walmart to use the trove of data — for a price — to better understand consumer habits, and subsequently craft messaging appropriate to those shoppers. In the past, most advertisers used the company’s data to expose shoppers to ads on Walmart properties — Walmart’s website and app, for example. The retailer means to expand that reach across the entire Web.
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In-store digital advertising. Capitalizing on consumer data so that both brands and shoppers benefit. In its aspirations to be a media powerhouse, Walmart is thinking outside the box to bring digital advertising to the next level.
Learn more about our expertise with Walmart Connect here.
