Walmart Connect: The Complete 2026 Advertising Guide

Walmart Connect is the advertising arm of Walmart, and in 2026 it is growing faster than any other part of the company.

For a brand already selling on Walmart, it is the most direct way to buy visibility on the site, in the app and in 4,600+ stores. This guide covers every ad product, who can buy what, how the auction works, what the reports show and how it compares with Amazon Ads.

We manage Walmart Connect alongside Amazon for the brands and agencies on Adbrew, so the advice here comes from running real accounts, not from the brochure.

What Is Walmart Connect?

Walmart Connect is Walmart's retail media network. It sells ads on Walmart.com and the Walmart app, across the open web, on connected TV (CTV), on social platforms and inside Walmart stores, and it measures them against what Walmart customers actually buy.

It was called Walmart Media Group until January 2021, when Walmart renamed it and widened its remit beyond its own site. The thing that separates it from a regular ad network is closed-loop data: Walmart sees the ad and the purchase, online and in store.

The business is big and still accelerating. Walmart's global advertising business grew 46% to nearly $6.4 billion in fiscal 2026 (February 2025 to January 2026), including VIZIO, according to its Q4 FY26 earnings release.

In the latest quarter, ended July 31, 2026, Walmart Connect in the US grew 43% excluding VIZIO, and global advertising grew 38%, per Walmart's Q2 FY27 results.

What Changed in Walmart Connect in 2025 and 2026

Most guides to Walmart Connect still describe the 2023 platform. A lot has moved since, and some of it changes how you should run campaigns today.

These dates come from Walmart's Sponsored Search release notes and Walmart Connect's own announcements.

What about VIZIO? Walmart closed its $2.3 billion VIZIO acquisition in December 2024, and VIZIO now sits at the center of Walmart Connect's CTV offer. That includes VIZIO Home Screen ads, Walmart audiences on VIZIO through Walmart DSP, and, since 2026, Walmart data on VIZIO inventory through Yahoo DSP and Magnite.

Every Walmart Connect Ad Product

Walmart groups its ads into four families: Sponsored Search, onsite display, offsite media and in-store. Here is what each one is and how it is bought.

1. Sponsored Products

Sponsored Products are cost-per-click ads for single items, shown in search results, on browse and item pages, on the homepage and in "stock up" placements. You pay only when a shopper clicks through to your product page.

Placements include search in-grid, carousels, the Buy Box area on item pages and in-cart grids, per Walmart's Sponsored Products page. Campaigns are automatic (Walmart picks the searches and pages) or manual (you choose keywords with exact, phrase or broad match).

This is where most sellers start and where most Walmart budgets end up. Our deeper guide to Walmart Sponsored Products placements covers each slot.

2. Sponsored Brands

Sponsored Brands put your logo, a headline and several products at the top of search results. They are keyword-targeted, priced per click, and now take custom images and a Brand Asset Manager for creative.

The minimum bid has been $0.50 since May 2025. They are the main tool for defending your brand terms, which matters more since competitors were allowed into positions 1 and 2 on branded searches.

3. Sponsored Videos

Sponsored Videos are 5 to 45 second videos that play in search results, linked to up to ten shoppable items, per Walmart's Sponsored Videos page. They are also cost-per-click, with a $0.50 minimum bid from July 23, 2026.

Walmart says 91% of sales attributed to Sponsored Videos for small and mid-sized advertisers came from new-to-brand customers (first-party data, February 2024 to January 2025). That makes them a growth tool rather than a harvest tool.

4. Onsite Display

Onsite display is banner and rich-media inventory on Walmart's own site and app: Marquee and Skyline at the top of key pages, Gallery carousels, Brand Box on item pages and in-grid Tiles. It targets by behavior, keyword, context or run of site.

Self-serve display runs on an eCPM auction where the winner pays its own bid, never more than its max, per Walmart Marketplace Learn. Our Walmart onsite display guide goes deeper.

5. Walmart DSP, CTV and Offsite Media

Walmart DSP is Walmart's demand-side platform, powered by The Trade Desk, per Walmart's offsite media page. It buys display, video, CTV, audio and gaming across the open web using Walmart audiences, and reports against verified Walmart transactions.

CTV runs through VIZIO and other publishers, and Walmart data is now spreading to other platforms too, from Google's Display and Video 360 for YouTube to Yahoo DSP. We cover setup and audiences in our Walmart DSP guide and Walmart Connect audience targeting.

6. Social

Since April 2026, self-serve advertisers can plan, run and measure Meta campaigns in the Ad Center, with closed-loop measurement through LiveRamp's clean room. TikTok and Pinterest have closed-loop measurement and an add-to-cart beta for managed clients, with TikTok self-serve planned for later in 2026.

7. In-Store Ads and Brand Shops

Store ads cover digital screens (including Deli and Bakery screens and the TV Wall), in-store audio and Walmart Radio, demos and pickup and delivery sampling, per Walmart's store ads page. Walmart's page routes store ads through its sales team and partners rather than a self-serve flow, so plan them with your Walmart Connect contact.

Brand Shops and Brand Shelves are Walmart's version of a brand store: a branded landing page you can send Sponsored Brands and display traffic to. In 2026 Walmart added an automated Brand Shop builder.

Who Can Advertise on Walmart Connect?

Three groups buy Walmart Connect, and what they can buy depends on their relationship with Walmart.

• Marketplace sellers (3P). You sign in to the Ad Center with your Seller Center account. Sponsored Products are open to any item that is in stock, winning the Buy Box and published, per Marketplace Learn.

• Brand owners among sellers. Sponsored Brands, Sponsored Videos and onsite display need a brand registered with the USPTO and onboarded to the Walmart Brand Portal, with the seller based in the US, China, Hong Kong, the UK or India.

• Suppliers (1P). Brands that sell wholesale to Walmart sign in with Supplier Center and get the same Sponsored Search products, and typically work with Walmart Connect's team on display, offsite and store media.

• Agencies and tech partners. They manage accounts through the Ad Center or the Walmart Connect API, and can be listed in Walmart's partner directory.

Not selling on Walmart yet? Our guide on how to sell on Walmart covers the application.

How the Walmart Connect Auction and Bidding Work

Every Sponsored Search impression is decided by an auction that weighs relevance and bid. Walmart's own wording: "the most relevant product with the highest bid wins the ad placement."

Since 2022, US Sponsored Search has run on what Walmart calls an Advanced Second Price Auction: the algorithm weighs each product's relevance (historical performance, shopper intent, contextual fit) and its max bid. The winner pays what it needs to beat the competing relevant bids, which is often less than its max bid.

The practical consequence: relevance lowers what you pay, and a higher max bid mainly buys better placement. A well-converting listing can win against a higher bidder and still pay less per click.

Bidding strategies

Walmart offers three ways to set Sponsored Products bids:

1. Fixed bidding. Walmart uses your bid as set. It is the default, and the only strategy that supports negative keywords.

2. Dynamic bidding. Walmart adjusts your bid up or down in real time based on how likely a shopper is to buy. Walmart does not publish US limits for those adjustments, so test it against a fixed-bid control.

3. Target ROAS. Launched in 2025 for automatic campaigns. You set a return on ad spend goal and Walmart's algorithm sets bids to hit it.

One trap we see often: negative keywords only work on fixed-bid campaigns. If you switch a campaign to dynamic bidding or Target ROAS, Walmart removes its negatives, per the negative keyword documentation.

Sponsored Brands and Sponsored Videos bid on keywords with a $0.50 floor, and placement and platform bid multipliers let you weight bids toward the placements and devices that convert. Our guide to Walmart bidding strategies has the full playbook.

Negative keywords, finally

Negative keywords arrived for Sponsored Products in July 2026, in negative exact and negative phrase, up to 500 per ad group. Before that, the only way to stop a wasteful search term on Walmart was to lower the bid on everything.

If you already run negatives on Amazon, the logic transfers directly. Our negative keywords guide explains thresholds, and Walmart keyword research covers finding terms in the first place.

Walmart Connect Reporting and Measurement

Walmart's biggest advantage is that it sees both the ad and the purchase, online and in stores. Its reporting is built around that closed loop.

• Attribution windows. Sponsored Search reports offer 3, 14 and 30 day windows. We use 14 days as the working default and look at 30 days for considered purchases.

• In-store sales. Since June 2026, in-store advertised sales, other sales, units and orders appear in several Sponsored Search reports at all three windows, per the release notes.

• Consideration metrics. Product page views and add-to-carts have been in Sponsored Search reporting since October 2025.

• Incrementality. Search Incrementality is generally available and measures the causal lift of search ads, not just attributed sales.

• Offsite and CTV. DSP, CTV and social are measured against verified Walmart online and store transactions.

One practical note for teams pulling data by API: snapshot reports can only be downloaded for 62 days, down from 90 since October 8, 2025. Store what you need.

For a full checklist of what to look at in these reports, see our Walmart PPC audit.

Walmart Connect vs Amazon Ads

Most brands that ask us about Walmart Connect already run Amazon Ads, and want to know what carries over.

Scale is the first difference. Amazon's advertising services revenue was $68.6 billion across 2025 and $19.8 billion in Q2 2026 alone, per its Q2 2026 earnings release. Walmart's whole global ad business was nearly $6.4 billion in fiscal 2026, roughly a tenth of Amazon's.

In practice, three things trip up Amazon-first teams. In the accounts we manage, Walmart is less crowded and CPCs on the same keyword are often lower, but conversion data takes longer to build because traffic is smaller.

Walmart's attribution is wider (in-store sales and longer windows), so a Walmart ROAS is not directly comparable with an Amazon ROAS. And the Buy Box rule is stricter: an ad for an item that loses the Walmart Buy Box stops serving.

Our full comparison of the two marketplaces is in Walmart vs Amazon.

How to Get Started With Walmart Connect

This is the order we follow when we bring a brand onto Walmart Connect.

1. Fix Retail Readiness First

Ads only serve on items that are in stock, published and winning the Buy Box. Check content quality and pricing before spending a dollar, using our Walmart listing optimization guide.

Walmart says Marketplace sellers using Walmart Fulfillment Services and Sponsored Products together averaged more than 5x the annual GMV of sellers on WFS alone, per its 2026 Seller Summit recap.

2. Get Into the Ad Center

Sign in at advertising.walmart.com with your Seller Center or Supplier Center login. Add a payment method and the users who need access.

3. Register Your Brand

If you own a trademark, onboard to Brand Portal. It opens up Sponsored Brands, Sponsored Videos and onsite display, and protects your listings.

4. Launch an Automatic Campaign

Start with an automatic Sponsored Products campaign on fixed bidding, covering your best sellers. Run it for two to four weeks to collect search terms and item-page data.

5. Build Manual Campaigns and Add Negatives

Move search terms that convert into manual keyword campaigns. Add negative keywords for terms that spend without selling, and keep those campaigns on fixed bidding so the negatives stick.

6. Defend Your Brand Terms

Bid on your own brand name with Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands and Sponsored Videos. Since June 2025 a competitor can take the top two spots on your branded searches if you do not.

7. Add Display and Offsite When Search Is Stable

Layer onsite display and then Walmart DSP or social once search runs profitably. Walmart reports a 45% median increase in new-to-brand ad sales for sellers that paired onsite display with Sponsored Products.

Mistakes We See in Walmart Connect Accounts

• Advertising items that cannot win. No Buy Box or low stock means no impressions, and the budget sits idle while competitors take the traffic.

• Copying Amazon targets one to one. A 25% ACOS target from Amazon is not the right number on Walmart, where attribution includes store sales and longer windows.

• Switching bid strategies without checking negatives. Moving a campaign to dynamic bidding or Target ROAS silently drops its negative keywords.

• Leaving brand terms open. Branded searches convert best, which is exactly why competitors bid on them.

• Judging upper-funnel ads on online ROAS. Video, display and CTV should be judged on new-to-brand sales, in-store sales and incrementality.

• Buying placement with bid instead of relevance. Raising bids on a weak listing costs more per click; fixing content, price and reviews lowers what the auction charges you.

How We Run Walmart Connect in Adbrew

Everything above can be done by hand in the Ad Center. Across dozens of campaigns and two marketplaces, it gets slow.

Adbrew is an agentic retail media management platform for Amazon and Walmart, and Walmart Connect is a full part of it:

• Automation with control. Rulesets adjust bids, budgets and placements across Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands and Sponsored Videos on thresholds you set, using the same logic you trust on Amazon. See Walmart automated rules.

• Bulk actions. Change bids, budgets, states and keywords across hundreds of campaigns at once.

• One view of Amazon and Walmart. Dashboards put both marketplaces side by side, so you compare spend, sales and ROAS without stitching CSVs.

• Adbrew Intelligence. Ask "which Walmart keywords spent over $50 without a sale last month?" and the agent finds them and drafts the negatives for you to approve.

• Adbrew MCP. Work your Walmart Connect account from Claude, ChatGPT or Cursor, with every change applied only after approval.

More than 5,000 brands, agencies and aggregators use Adbrew, and the platform has been recognised at Walmart Connect.

Make Walmart Your Second Engine

Walmart Connect in 2026 is no longer a smaller copy of Amazon Ads. It has its own auction rules, its own data and a pace of change that rewards the brands who keep up.

Want to run Walmart Connect and Amazon from one place, with automation you control? Book a demo with our team and we'll walk through your account.