COMMENTARY

Walmart Connect Steps Closer Into The Media Selling World, Including TV

• by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, September 22, 2022

Retail media is accelerating its growth, as Walmart Connect strikes deals with the likes of TikTok, Snap, and Roku for video advertising, ecommerce and other marketing efforts.

Are bigger TV business connections coming next?

Walmart's deals are moving the retailing giant closer to the advertising levels of its competitor Amazon, which amassed a huge coffer of $31 billion in ad revenues last year.

Walmart has struck a partnership with Roku to make TV streaming the next e-commerce shopping destination. Roku advertisers will receive insights on effectiveness with Walmart Connect measurement.

These moves might be just a stone’s throw from allowing Walmart Connect to sell some actual TV commercial time.

And for TikTok, Walmart Connect will provide advertisers with the opportunity to serve in-feed ads on TikTok with Walmart Connect's targeting and measurement.

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But the key deal for many might be with Snap: Walmart says this is the first-time advertisers can buy Snap advertising units through Walmart Connect.

Looking at all this, with the Walmart deal to carry premium video streamer Paramount+ on its site again, similar to what Prime Video does for Amazon Prime -- makes its membership program Walmart+ a better, all-encompassing ecommerce membership site.

The company’s retail customers can get free access to an ad-supported Paramount+ subscription included in their Walmart+ membership, which has 11 million customers as of July, according to Consumer Intelligence Research Partners.

Right now, Walmart will be benefiting from having a big TV brand -- Paramount -- on its site. But where will it go from here?

In the near term, one doesn’t expect legacy TV ad-selling companies to give up control of their still-prized inventory -- linear TV networks or their newfangled streaming services -- to many third-party sellers, if at all.

Retail media is a growing area that can dramatically expand reach in the fractionalizing media world that legacy TV-based media companies now find themselves in.

Retailers have tremendous access to first-party/purchase data, which can be packaged in advertising inventory and sold programmatically.

What’s not to like -- especially when your traditional TV-based businesses are under enormous pressure?