Small group workshops to help you learn, optimize, and grow.
.svg){kind=logo}
Three-fifths of a century—that’s how long it has been since the Walton brothers opened the first Walmart in Arkansas. Since then, it has grown from a cozy neighborhood store to a global marketplace serving customers in over two dozen countries.
Walmart provides its customers with multiple shopping avenues with its diverse mix of neighborhood markets, supercenters, warehouse clubs, and eCommerce sites. This allows shoppers to choose whichever shopping method suits their convenience and preferences. This is also a key factor in its continuous growth.
If you’re an online seller, you can leverage Walmart’s increasing popularity to grow your business. With heightened competition online, you need more than an expanded listing in other marketplaces. You need a strategy that widens your reach and increases your visibility. One way to do this is through Walmart Advertising.
Every week, approximately 255 million customers visit Walmart stores throughout the world. Many of them either do their shopping online or browse through the online marketplace first before going to brick-and-mortar Walmart shops. In fact, more than 133 million unique visits were recorded for Wal-Mart in March 2024—and that’s in the United States alone.
This popularity not only puts Walmart among the top 50 multi-platform properties but also makes it a prime platform to reach a broad consumer base. Advertising on Walmart enables you to target a specific audience from its diverse user demographics. It also gives you the following advantages:
These benefits give you a competitive edge without having to invest heavily in advertising. Walmart ads are budget-friendly, with options to set daily caps or campaign limits that align with your financial capabilities.
All Walmart Marketplace sellers are eligible to place ads on the platform as long as they meet these two requirements:
The ads can be placed and managed through the Walmart Ad Center, a self-service platform that makes it easy for all marketplace sellers to promote their products. New sellers are automatically registered with the Walmart Ad Center, where they can learn the ins and outs of advertising in the marketplace. However, they still need to have at least one valid product listing to run ads.
Walmart Ads follow a cost-per-click (CPC) model, so you’d only need to pay for advertising when shoppers click on your ads. The cost per ad depends on how much you bid on keywords and what auction results are. Ad placement is determined by two main factors: relevancy and bid amount.
The relevance of your ads to the search term and customer intent plays a key role in getting prime placement. Walmart algorithms filter through signals such as contextual relevance, seller reviews, shipping tags, and product performance. They then qualify products that would most likely bring the best value for shoppers.
Relevant qualifying ads are then sorted according to bid amounts. Those with the highest bids are granted better in-grid placements.
You have two main options for setting up bids: manual or automatic. For manual bidding, you select the keywords you want to bid on. For automated bidding, Walmart adjusts bid amounts depending on market conditions and competitor bids. Manual bidding gives you full control over which keywords to target, while automatic bidding removes the guesswork from bid management.
For both bidding strategies, you can set a maximum CPC bid based on your advertising budget.
Walmart offers different types of advertising programs through Walmart Connect, an omnichannel media platform. As a Marketplace seller, you can run Sponsored Search ads, Display ads, and In-store displays. You can manage your ads directly on the Walmart Ad Center or grant user-based access to an agency or API partner.
There are three kinds of Sponsored Search advertising: Sponsored Brands, Sponsored Products, and Sponsored Videos. They can be used concurrently to boost visibility and only cost money when a customer clicks on the ad listing. These types of ads appear in one of these spots on Walmart Marketplace:
Sponsored Brands get the top spot on search results that include their targeted keywords. This premium placement gives them high visibility and helps raise brand awareness.
To be eligible for Sponsored Brands placement, you must be:
Use this ad type to launch new items, put a spotlight on seasonal items, or promote products that aren’t making it on search rankings. To intensify brand recall, customize your ad creative with your brand logo, a catchy headline, and up to four featured items. Include shoppable links to boost conversions.
This ad type appears with the “Sponsored” tag on search results and on detail pages of related products. They may also be shown on the Walmart homepage and other high-traffic spots. Typically blended with organic search results in-grid, they’re not as prominent as banner ads and Buy Box spots. However, they still boost visibility by putting products in front of shoppers with high interest.
For your product listing to be eligible for Sponsored Products placement, it must be:
Sponsored Products are bid-based. To get a good position in-grid, your product must be relevant to the search and have the highest bid for that particular keyword or category. When you win a placement, your listing can appear at least twice on a single results page as a sponsored or organic listing.
Like Sponsored Products, Sponsored Videos are chosen based on keyword relevancy and bid amount. Shown in-grid along with other search results, these short videos help boost interactions and guide shoppers in product discovery. When a shopper clicks at any point in the video, they are directed to the product item page. An add-to-cart button can also be added to the listing so shoppers can buy the products directly.
Sponsored Videos work well in engaging shoppers and leading them to learn more about a product. However, they are not available for all Marketplace sellers. To run Sponsored Videos, you must be:
Only one Sponsored Video is shown on the search results page, so competition to get this premium spot is tough.
Walmart offers both on-site and off-site display ads through the Display Self-Serve (DSS) platform or the Demand-Side Platform (DSP). Through programmatic display advertising, DSP campaigns can be used for advanced targeting and for broadening brand reach across Walmart’s digital properties and its partner sites. For on-site ads, DSS empowers small sellers to run display ad campaigns with limited budgets. It also gives them access to creative tools, an assets library, and targeting tools for ad creation and optimization.
Display ads can appear as a highlighted brand box within search results, in a gallery on the homepage or a browse page, or as a marquee on top of Walmart pages. Here are some display ads you might see when browsing through the Walmart Marketplace.
Walmart helps sellers widen their customer base by expanding their reach to other websites and social media platforms. If you opt for this type of advertising, you can showcase your brand on Facebook, Instagram, eCommerce sites, and other websites to direct potential customers to your Walmart product pages.
Walmart has over 10,000 brick-and-mortar stores in over 19 countries, and millions of customers do their shopping in person. Reach this consumer base and encourage them to purchase your products through ads displayed on TV screens, self-checkout ads, interactive product demos, in-store audio ads, or product samples. Walmart Connect enables you to do all these without having to do much of the legwork.
Now that you’ve figured out which types of ads you’re eligible to run and which ones are aligned with your marketing strategy, it’s time to set up your campaigns. As mentioned earlier, new sellers are automatically registered to the Walmart Ad Center, where you can manage all your ads. Log into your account to go to your dashboard, then do the following:
If you have multiple products, you can streamline ad management by creating an Ad Group. You can add up to 2,000 products to one group and have them share the same ad settings. For advanced targeting, you can select how you want your ad placements prioritized by ticking the boxes for Search In-grid, Buy Box, Search Carousel, and /or Item Carousel. You can also use the Bid Multiplier to increase your bids for ads that are eligible for premium placements.
Advertising on Walmart is pretty straightforward, using its self-service tools and managed services. However, you still need a solid strategy to maximize the benefits you can gain from running ads on and beyond the platform.
Complying with Walmart Ad Policies is among the best practices that you should follow. Walmart has specific requirements for ad creatives and content, including the following terms of use:
While ads for most products are automatically approved by the system, some ad categories are subject to deeper scrutiny and require further verification. Among the ads requiring prior approval are those with the following claims:
The full list can be accessed through Walmart’s ad policy pages. Make sure to go through and understand all policies, as noncompliance can have serious repercussions. You may have your ads or seller account suspended and incur steep fines or penalties.
Is it worth advertising on Walmart, or should you just stick with Amazon?
Having a wider reach, Amazon still holds the top spot among all online marketplaces in almost all product categories. However, Walmart’s physical stores in thousands of locations across the United States and worldwide give it an edge when it comes to fulfilling orders. Marketplace Pulse data shows that 50% of Walmart’s online sales are actually fulfilled through one of their physical stores. Particularly for perishable goods, Walmart is the preferred channel. In fact, Amazon’s 2.5% share of food and beverage sales pales in comparison with Walmart’s 18.2% share in the same category.
When it comes to advertising, Walmart tends to be more budget-friendly. There are no monthly subscription fees, and bid amounts are flexible. With fewer third-party sellers on the platform, there is also relatively less competition compared with Amazon.
If you are intent on achieving success as an online seller, advertising on both platforms may be the strategic choice. Doing so can maximize your visibility on both platforms and reach more audiences. To ease the management of your accounts, ads, and inventory on these platforms, head on over to Threecolts and choose the right digital tools for your needs.
