Walmart Connect Scales Full-Funnel Ads to Challenge Amazon's Dominance

Walmart Connect is no longer content with being a secondary player in the retail media space. The platform is undergoing a fundamental transformation, evolving from a performance-heavy search tool into a sophisticated, full-funnel media powerhouse. This strategic pivot is designed to challenge Amazon Advertising’s long-standing dominance by leveraging Walmart's unique advantage: a massive physical retail footprint combined with a rapidly maturing digital ecosystem. By integrating high-level brand awareness with granular conversion data, Walmart is positioning itself as the premier destination for advertisers seeking 'closed-loop' measurement.

The linchpin of this strategy is the $2.3 billion acquisition of Vizio and its SmartCast operating system. This move provides Walmart with direct access to the 'biggest screen in the house,' allowing the retailer to control the entire advertising journey from the initial discovery on a television screen to the final purchase, whether that happens on a smartphone or at a physical checkout counter. For brands, especially in the Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) sector, this solves the perennial problem of television attribution. Historically, it has been difficult to prove that a 30-second TV spot led to a specific purchase; Walmart Connect’s integration with Vizio aims to make that connection explicit using its first-party data from over 255 million weekly customers.

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The linchpin of this strategy is the $2.3 billion acquisition of Vizio and its SmartCast operating system.

Artificial Intelligence is the second pillar of this expansion. Walmart is investing heavily in AI to enhance its predictive modeling and creative automation. These tools allow advertisers to move beyond basic keyword targeting and instead reach audiences based on complex behavioral patterns and predicted future needs. For instance, AI can help a brand identify not just who bought their product last week, but who is likely to need it next Tuesday based on historical purchase cycles and local inventory levels. This level of precision is critical as the industry moves away from third-party cookies and toward a reliance on high-quality first-party data sets.

When compared to Amazon, Walmart’s physical presence remains its most potent weapon. While Amazon has made inroads into physical retail through Whole Foods and Amazon Go, it cannot match the scale of Walmart’s 4,700+ U.S. stores. This omnichannel reality allows Walmart Connect to offer 'store-attributed' sales data that is highly valuable to brands that still see the majority of their volume moving through physical aisles. By connecting digital ad exposure to in-store transactions, Walmart provides a holistic view of the customer journey that few other platforms can replicate.

However, the path to unseating Amazon is not without challenges. Amazon’s ad business is significantly more mature, with a deeper bench of self-service tools and a more established international presence. Walmart must continue to refine its ad-serving technology and reporting dashboards to meet the high expectations of agency partners who are used to the sophistication of the Amazon and Google ecosystems. The success of Walmart Connect will ultimately depend on how seamlessly it can integrate the Vizio hardware with its retail data, creating a frictionless experience for both the advertiser and the end consumer.

Looking ahead, the industry should expect Walmart to lean further into 'shoppable TV' formats. As the Vizio integration matures, we will likely see more interactive ad units that allow viewers to add items to their Walmart cart directly from their television remote. This convergence of content and commerce represents the next frontier of retail media, turning every screen into a potential point of sale and further blurring the lines between entertainment and shopping.