Walmart’s Advertising and Synergies with Amazon
As more shoppers turn to online marketplaces, Walmart.com has quickly emerged as one of the leading e-commerce giants, offering brands an incredible opportunity for growth. According to Statista, Walmart’s U.S. e-commerce sales reached over $65 billion in 2024, marking a 22% increase from the previous year and solidifying its place as a key player in the online retail space (Source).
This explosive growth has not gone unnoticed by our team. Doree Wendling, GO’s VP of Marketing, emphasizes a few reasons why Walmart.com is a crucial platform for brands to invest in for 2025 and beyond:
“Walmart offers a tremendous opportunity to expand reach, with 90% of Americans shopping there each year across 4,700 stores and Walmart.com. Leveraging Walmart’s first-party data allows for precise, scalable targeting, including predictive buyers, lapsed customers, competitive conquesting, lifestyle audiences, and previous category purchasers. Additionally, the platform’s advanced measurement tools deliver valuable insights into how advertising drives both online and in-store sales.”
To help you lean into Walmart's online platform, we’ll explore some of their advertising tools and their benefits. We'll also highlight the synergistic advantages of establishing a presence on both Walmart.com and Amazon, allowing you to maximize your reach and impact across the digital marketplace.
Walmart Advertising Tools
With Walmart's powerful advertising solutions, your brand can enhance visibility, generate more traffic, and effectively drive conversions. Below, we’ll explore some of Walmart’s ad tools and share key tips to help you get started:
Sponsored Product Ads
Sponsored Product ads are a key component of Walmart’s ecosystem, appearing in search results and on browse, category, pre-checkout, and product pages to help brands increase item visibility, consideration, and sales.
A few best practices:
Use auto campaigns to target placements based on shopping behavior (this is not available for manual campaigns). I.e., if a past customer is at checkout, an auto campaign can appear with a prompt that asks, “Missing anything?” to encourage an additional purchase.
Run auto and manual campaigns simultaneously to capture new and relevant keywords to harvest for manual campaigns.
Since Walmart has no negative targeting, analyze keyword reports consistently and keep your keyword strategy tight and specific to maintain efficient spend.
Sponsored Brand Ads
Walmart's Sponsored Brand ads highlight multiple products in a single unit and are prominently displayed in high-visibility locations, including search results and browse pages. These ads are strategically designed to capture shopper attention at the top of the funnel, boosting brand awareness and bringing visibility to the broader portfolio.
A few best practices:
Though Walmart only displays up to four products per campaign (prioritizing those with the highest conversion potential), brands can include up to 10 products per campaign. To maximize results, add as many relevant products as possible to the campaign.
Harvest keywords from auto campaigns using the Item Keyword Performance report.
Utilize the Keyword Performance report consistently to stay on top of efficient keywords as Sponsored Brand is an awareness-driving tactic with high competition.
Sponsored Video Ads
Sponsored Video ads are a powerful tool for engaging Walmart shoppers with immersive content in search results. By showcasing products in action, these ads drive brand awareness, enhance product discovery, and elevate shopper consideration, ultimately leading to increased conversions.
A few best practices:
Sponsored Videos launch on mute, so be sure to showcase the product in action, use simple headlines, and incorporate closed captioning.
Promote items in your portfolio that are top converters, best sellers, top priority, and seasonally relevant.
Brands can add 1–10 items to a Sponsored Video ad group. Include multiple items, giving Walmart more options to choose from as they select the product most likely to convert shoppers for each scenario.
Onsite Display Ads
Walmart’s Onsite Display ads enable brands to highlight their products with compelling creatives and copy while reaching target audiences at scale across the shopping funnel. These ads appear in high-traffic placements across Walmart’s website, including search results, browse pages, product detail pages, and ‘Thank You’ pages. They’re a powerful tool for building brand loyalty, promoting new products, and driving conversion.
A few best practices:
Utilize your brand's voice in the headline when describing the idea, subject, or value of the advertised product.
The subheader should complement the headline with 1–2 lines of text that describe the product’s benefits and/or use cases.
Incorporate lifestyle, product-in-use, and product-in-studio imagery to showcase your item in its natural environment and highlight your brand’s story and personality.
With this information at your fingertips, you might now be asking, “Which ad tool should my brand use?” GO’s perspective: leverage as many as possible to build a full-funnel marketing strategy. Here’s more on this from Marketing Media Specialist II at GO, Jacqueline Miller:
"Our team encourages brands to utilize a range of Walmart ad tools to engage customers at every touchpoint—enhancing visibility, awareness, and long-term growth. What’s exciting is that Walmart continues to roll out new capabilities and reporting, helping brands gain valuable insights to optimize their full-funnel campaigns. For example, Walmart’s ability to measure new-to-brand across all ad types allows us to fine-tune our strategy from reach to purchase.”
The Synergies Between Walmart and Amazon
Walmart and Amazon have several differences in how their platforms operate, such as how much their advertisements cost, the audiences they typically reach, and capabilities within their respective ad consoles. While it’s important to familiarize yourself with these things as they can impact your advertising strategy, the ways that Walmart and Amazon complement each other far outweigh the differences they have.
GO’s Director of Programmatic and STV Advertising, Dana Swygard, addresses this topic:
“The results we have seen from Amazon’s Omnichannel Reporting have highlighted that advertising on one platform can drive performance across others. We believe that managing both Walmart and Amazon advertising together… create[s] a symbiotic relationship with campaigns boosting results on both platforms.”
Rather than viewing Walmart and Amazon as separate entities, brands should leverage the synergies between the two platforms to maximize their impact. Here are some of the key benefits your brand can take advantage of if you decide to have a presence on both platforms:
Repurposing Content for Continuity: Many assets, such as ad images, videos, image carousels, titles, and bullet points, can be used across both platforms to ensure a cohesive brand presence.
In-Store Review Checks: Many customers read online reviews while shopping in-store. A plethora of strong reviews on both platforms can enhance consumer confidence in finalizing the purchase.
Building Brand Awareness: Leveraging display ads on both Walmart and Amazon increases overall reach, connecting brands with consumers wherever they are.
Unified Promotion Strategies: Major tentpoles and promotional periods often align across Walmart and Amazon, meaning holistic strategies that take both platforms into account are critical for event success.
Are you ready to dive into the world of Walmart advertising?
As you consider expanding your brand’s presence into Walmart.com, we recommend testing at least one of the four advertising options covered in this blog, though leveraging multiple will drive an even greater impact. Whether it's Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands, Sponsored Video, or Onsite Display ads, each tool offers distinct advantages at different points along the path to conversion. Additionally, remember that Walmart and Amazon can be complementary to one another, working together to create a cohesive brand experience and boosting awareness and reach across both platforms.
If you need help maximizing the synergies between Amazon and Walmart, our GO team is here to assist. While Amazon is our primary focus, we also bring in-depth knowledge and experience managing Walmart campaigns for our clients. Visit our Services page for more details on how we can support your advertising efforts across these platforms or click the ‘Contact Us’ button below to strike up a conversation!