In the hierarchy of retail media networks, there is Amazon, there is Walmart, and then there is a long drop to a crowded field of grocers and drugstore chains hoping to monetize their checkout data. Walmart Connect, the advertising arm of the Bentonville behemoth, appears to have decided that the distance between first and second place is not yet comfortable enough.
The company's sales team has begun approaching brand advertisers directly — bypassing their agencies — to offer on-site brand lift studies ahead of the holiday shopping season. Three agency executives told Digiday that multiple clients had been contacted, though none would name names. Walmart did not respond to a request for comment.
The maneuver is not without precedent; retailers have long dangled tests and beta programs before their largest advertisers. But the direct outreach signals something more deliberate: a bid to own not just media budgets but the measurement conversation itself. That conversation grows considerably louder in the fourth quarter, when chief financial officers begin asking pointed questions about where the money went.
"From our experience, Q4 is when advertisers are least willing to fund spend they cannot defend," said Lacie Edgeman, co-owner and managing director at the agency PrograMetrix.
The studies are being offered based on advertiser spending levels with Walmart Connect, according to Anthony Costanzo, chief analytics officer at Mile Marker, who said at least four of his firm's clients were participating. The underlying question the studies purport to answer — did this campaign drive incremental sales, or did the retailer simply claim credit for purchases that would have happened anyway? — remains one of retail media's most persistent irritants.
Mr. Costanzo noted that advertisers still cannot independently set up or execute the studies themselves, leaving Walmart in the somewhat conflicted position of grading its own homework. (A familiar posture in walled-garden media.)
"We're still not able to execute the kinds of incrementality tests we'd like to," Mr. Costanzo said, "but it's a step in the right direction."
Whether that step leads toward genuine transparency or simply toward more persuasive sales materials remains, for now, a question the lift studies themselves cannot answer.
Original story published in Digiday: "Why Walmart Connect is pitching brands directly with lift studies", by Kimeko McCoy