Walmart DSP: How It Works, Access and Costs in 2026

Walmart DSP is the part of Walmart Connect that most brands ask about after their search ads are running. It reaches Walmart shoppers away from Walmart.com and tells you whether they bought, online or in a store.

This guide covers what Walmart DSP is in 2026, how to get access, what you can target and buy, how to read its measurement, what it costs and how it compares with Amazon DSP. We run Walmart and Amazon advertising side by side for brands and agencies, so the advice comes from planning both.

What Is Walmart DSP?

Walmart DSP is the demand-side platform of Walmart Connect, Walmart's retail media business. It lets advertisers buy programmatic display, online video, connected TV (CTV), audio and mobile ads across the open web, targeted with Walmart's first-party shopper data and measured against Walmart sales.

A demand-side platform (DSP) is software that bids on ad impressions in real time across many publishers and exchanges. What makes Walmart's different is the data underneath: purchases from Walmart.com, the Walmart app and its stores.

Walmart launched the platform in August 2021, built with The Trade Desk, and opened it to select suppliers that October. Walmart's offsite media page still describes it today as "Powered by The Trade Desk."

Walmart DSP sits inside Walmart Connect's offsite media, next to social and CTV. For the full map of Walmart's ad products, including Sponsored Search and onsite display, start with our Walmart Connect guide.

One naming note. Some searches for "Walmart DSP" are about delivery, since Amazon uses "DSP" for its Delivery Service Partners. This post is only about the advertising platform.

How Walmart DSP Works

Every Walmart DSP campaign runs the same loop: Walmart's data picks the audience, The Trade Desk's technology buys the impression, and Walmart's sales data scores the result.

1. The data. Walmart serves about 150 million customers a week in the US, online and in more than 4,600 stores, per its measurement page.

2. The audiences. That data is mapped to the SKU level and turned into thousands of prebuilt segments, according to The Trade Desk's Walmart DSP overview from November 2025.

3. The buy. You build campaigns with budgets, flights, bids, frequency caps and creative, and the DSP bids on impressions across exchanges and direct deals. Most media is priced per thousand impressions (CPM).

4. The measurement. Walmart matches people who saw an ad to people who bought at Walmart, online and in store, and reports the sales back.

You don't need to sell at Walmart to use it. The Trade Desk says the audiences help advertisers "whether they sell through Walmart or not", which opens the platform to auto, finance and other non-endemic brands.

If the mechanics of programmatic buying are new, our explainer on DSPs vs SSPs covers how the buy side and sell side fit together. The logic is the same on Walmart and Amazon.

What Changed in Walmart DSP in 2025 and 2026

Most Walmart DSP guides still describe the 2021 launch. The last twelve months changed two things: what you can buy inside Walmart DSP, and where else Walmart's data can be used.

Walmart has been clear that its own platform remains the center of this. In the May 2026 announcement, Walmart Connect wrote that "Walmart DSP remains a key tool for accessing our full ad solutions stack offsite."

The money is following. Walmart Connect in the US grew 43% excluding VIZIO in the quarter ended July 31, 2026, and Walmart's global advertising grew 38%, per its Q2 FY27 earnings release.

How to Get Access to Walmart DSP

There are three ways in, plus a fourth route if you already buy media in another DSP.

1. Self-Serve

Walmart built the DSP so brands and agencies could buy programmatically and self-serve, per the 2021 launch release. Your team, or your agency's trading desk, plans and runs campaigns in the platform.

This suits brands that already have programmatic skills or an agency that trades on The Trade Desk. You control every line item, and you need creative, a measurement plan and someone who checks pacing every day.

2. Managed by Walmart Connect

Walmart Connect's own team can plan, buy and report on campaigns for you. This is the usual route for large suppliers and for CTV-heavy plans that need curated deals.

Start the conversation with your Walmart Connect contact, or through the "Get in touch" form on Walmart's offsite media page.

3. Through a Walmart Connect Partner

Agencies and technology partners can run Walmart DSP for you. Walmart lists them in its partner directory, and partners onboard through the Walmart Connect partner program, where status depends on spend, product adoption and compliance.

This is the right route for most mid-size brands without an in-house programmatic trader. The partner sets its own fees and minimums.

4. Walmart Data in Another DSP

If your media already runs in Yahoo DSP or Google's Display & Video 360, Walmart audiences and closed-loop measurement are starting to reach you there. Yahoo DSP moved to alpha on October 6, 2026, and DV360 for YouTube was still a closed proof of concept when Walmart announced it in June.

Treat both as tests for now, not a replacement for Walmart DSP. Ask your Walmart Connect contact whether you qualify.

What about smaller advertisers?

For a brand that wants streaming TV but not a full programmatic setup, Vibe.co is the newer path. Walmart describes it as "a leading self-service streaming TV advertising platform" with more than 10,000 advertisers, and its acquisition closed on August 4, 2026.

Walmart said at signing that Vibe.co should help small and mid-size advertisers, including Marketplace sellers, launch CTV campaigns and tie spend to sales. How it will sit next to Walmart DSP hasn't been spelled out yet.

Walmart DSP Audiences: Walmart's First-Party Data

Walmart DSP's audiences come from what people buy at Walmart, online and in store, which is the main reason to use it over a general-purpose DSP. The Trade Desk notes that 89% of consumer packaged goods (CPG) purchases still happen in stores, a sale most online ad platforms never see.

Walmart describes the audiences in two layers:

• Past purchase audiences: shoppers grouped by what they bought, in which category and from which brands, using online and in-store transactions, per the 2021 launch release.

• Predictive segments: audiences modeled from shopping behavior to find people likely to buy next.

On top of that sit the thousands of prebuilt segments The Trade Desk describes. In practice you choose by category, by brand relationship (yours, a competitor's, none) and by how recently someone bought.

Our guide to Walmart Connect audience targeting goes segment by segment. Here is how we put them together into a plan.

1. Awareness: category buyers who don't buy your brand yet, on CTV and audio. Judge it on reach and new-to-brand buyers.

2. Consideration: in-market shoppers and buyers of competing or adjacent brands, on online video and display. Judge it on product page views, add-to-carts and sales lift.

3. Conversion: your lapsed buyers and recent product viewers, on display and mobile. Judge it on attributed sales.

The case for running all three is in Walmart's own data. Campaigns that ran audiences across multiple channels in 2024 averaged a 49% higher conversion rate than single-channel campaigns, per The Trade Desk's overview.

Frequency matters more on CTV than anywhere else, because a TV screen is shared and expensive. The principles in our frequency capping guide apply directly to Walmart DSP.

Where Walmart DSP Ads Run: Inventory in 2026

Walmart DSP buys across the open web, but in 2026 the inventory story is mostly about TV and audio.

1. CTV and VIZIO

Walmart completed its roughly $2.3 billion VIZIO acquisition in December 2024, which gave Walmart Connect its own TV platform. VIZIO's inventory is available in Walmart DSP through Connect Select.

Walmart says its CTV campaigns delivered a median of 44% new-to-brand buyers in fiscal 2026 (February 2025 to January 2026). Its offsite page adds that advertisers saw a 28% average increase in online attributed sales among CTV audiences, from 133 campaigns in fiscal 2025.

2. Connect Select

Connect Select is a curated marketplace inside Walmart DSP, launched on April 27, 2026. It packages CTV and other premium inventory, powered by Walmart data and direct supply paths, into deals focused on reach and awareness.

At launch it included VIZIO, Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery, with supply from FreeWheel, Index Exchange, Magnite and PubMatic. Advertisers find and activate the deals through Inventory Controls and Deal Desk in Walmart DSP.

3. Live Linear TV

At Partner Connect on October 6, 2026, Walmart announced private marketplace deals in Walmart DSP with Warner Bros. Discovery. They combine streaming with select live linear channels (TBS, TLC, truTV, HLN and Food Network), enabled by FreeWheel.

Walmart calls it the first time its audiences can be used for addressable targeting on live linear TV. More inventory is planned.

4. Spotify

From the same announcement, US advertisers can use Walmart audiences and closed-loop measurement across Spotify's audio, video and display formats through Walmart DSP.

5. Open-Web Display, Video and Audio

The rest is classic programmatic: display, online video, mobile and audio across the exchanges The Trade Desk reaches. Walmart reports that offsite display campaigns delivered a median of 52% new-to-brand customers in 2025.

Walmart audiences outside Walmart DSP

Walmart's data now also reaches inventory you buy elsewhere. Yahoo DSP's alpha started with VIZIO and is expanding to other CTV publishers, with Magnite on the sell side.

In the Yahoo proof of concept, Walmart reported that Hidden Valley Ranch saw 55% incremental reach beyond linear TV, 27% lower CPMs and a 26% increase in add-to-carts. Those are one brand's results, but they show what the data adds to a CTV buy.

How Walmart DSP Measures Results

Closed-loop measurement is the reason most brands try Walmart DSP. Walmart says its measurement "tracks sales across our site, app and in our stores," with onsite and offsite results available in near real time.

For Walmart DSP specifically, The Trade Desk lists three reports built on that data:

• New buyer reports: new-to-brand customers, updated daily. Advertisers using them saw up to 29% more new customers.

• Sales lift reports: the incremental sales a campaign caused.

• Rest-of-market analysis: sales outside Walmart. NCSolutions studies for Walmart advertisers in 2024 and 2025 recorded an average 4.8% sales lift beyond Walmart stores.

Walmart's measurement page also lists incrementality, brand impact and campaign insights. Upper-funnel measures such as brand lift come through third-party partners.

The worked example above uses illustrative numbers, but the pattern is real. A $20,000 CTV campaign that drives $18,000 of online sales looks like a loss at a 0.9 ROAS.

Add $34,000 of in-store sales and the same campaign shows $52,000 attributed, a 2.6 ROAS. If a lift study says half of that would have happened anyway, the incremental ROAS (iROAS) is 1.3.

We use all three numbers. Attributed ROAS steers line items week to week, omnichannel sales stop store-heavy brands from cutting a campaign that works, and incrementality decides the budget for the next quarter.

New-to-brand deserves its own line in every report. Walmart counts a customer as new to brand if they bought an advertised product after 12 months without buying from that item set, the same idea as Amazon's new-to-brand metrics.

Walmart DSP Costs and Minimums

Walmart does not publish a minimum spend, a fee schedule or rate card for Walmart DSP. None of its offsite media, measurement or partner pages state one, and the 2021 launch release didn't either.

Here is what we can say from how the platform works:

• Media is mostly bought per thousand impressions (CPM). CTV and live TV cost far more per thousand than open-web display, so a blended CPM tells you little.

• Deals change the price. Connect Select and private marketplace deals carry their own pricing, set when you activate them.

• Your access route adds cost. Managed service and partners each have their own terms and minimums.

Third-party articles quote figures from a few thousand dollars a month to six figures. We haven't found any of them on a Walmart source, so we don't repeat them. Get a written quote from Walmart Connect or your partner before you plan.

Our advice on the practical floor matches Amazon DSP. A test needs enough impressions and conversions for the bidding and the measurement to mean something, and a small budget spread across five audiences tells you nothing.

Walmart DSP vs Amazon DSP

Most brands asking about Walmart DSP already know Amazon DSP. The two look alike from a distance and differ in almost every detail that affects a plan.

Amazon's figures come from its DSP guide, which says managed service "typically requires a minimum spend of $50,000", and its Amazon Ads Agent page, which confirms self-service runs on budgets you set.

In practice, three differences drive the decision.

Where your customers buy. If most of your category sells in physical stores, Walmart's in-store data measures what Amazon can't. If your sales are mostly online and on Amazon, Amazon DSP sees more of the path.

Where your product sells. Amazon DSP pays off most when you sell on Amazon, because you can retarget detail page viewers and measure new-to-brand on Amazon. Walmart DSP does the same for Walmart sales, online and in store.

How you buy. Walmart DSP runs on The Trade Desk, so an agency that trades there can pick it up quickly. Amazon DSP now lives inside Amazon Ads Agent, as we explain in our guide to what Amazon DSP is in 2026.

Brands that sell heavily at both retailers usually run both. For the wider marketplace comparison, see Walmart vs Amazon.

Is Walmart DSP Right for Your Brand?

Walmart DSP is worth testing when most of these are true:

• you sell at Walmart, in stores, online or both, and want offsite media measured against those sales;

• your category sells heavily in physical stores, such as grocery, household, health and beauty;

• your Walmart search campaigns are stable and profitable, so new demand has somewhere to convert;

• you can fund a test long enough for sales lift and new-to-brand results to mean something;

• you have a trader, an agency or a Walmart Connect team to run it.

If your Walmart search ads aren't there yet, fix them first. An offsite campaign that sends shoppers to listings that lose the Buy Box or run out of stock wastes the best part of the budget.

Our Walmart PPC audit covers the search side, and Walmart onsite display is the usual step between search and offsite.

Mistakes We See With Walmart DSP

• Judging CTV on online ROAS. For store-heavy categories, most of the sale happens at the register. Read online and in-store sales together, then check incrementality.

• Running offsite before search works. Walmart DSP creates demand. If your Sponsored Products placements and brand terms aren't covered, a competitor collects it.

• Retargeting only. Retargeting lapsed buyers looks efficient and mostly buys sales you would have made. Keep a share of budget on category buyers who are new to your brand.

• No frequency cap on TV. CTV impressions are expensive, and the fifth ad in a week to the same household rarely earns its cost.

• Planning on numbers from a blog. Walmart doesn't publish DSP minimums or fees. Get the quote in writing for your access route.

• Treating proofs of concept as products. Yahoo DSP is in alpha and DV360 was a closed test. Plan on Walmart DSP, and test the others on the side.

How We Run Walmart Alongside DSP in Adbrew

Walmart DSP itself is bought inside Walmart DSP, by your team, Walmart Connect or a partner. The work around it, on Walmart search and on Amazon, is where most of the hours go.

Adbrew is an agentic retail media management platform for Amazon and Walmart, and it covers that work:

• Walmart search that can take the demand. Walmart Connect in Adbrew automates bids, budgets and placements on Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands and Sponsored Videos on rules you set, so the shoppers your DSP campaign creates find your listings.

• Amazon DSP with no minimum. Run Amazon DSP through Adbrew's seat with no minimum spend, or connect an account you already hold, if you want to test both retail DSPs.

• One view of both retailers. Dashboards put Amazon and Walmart ad performance side by side, so you can see whether search sales moved while an offsite campaign ran.

• [Adbrew Intelligence](https://adbrew.io/adbrew-intelligence). Ask "how did Walmart branded search sales change during the CTV flight?" and the agent builds the comparison from your data.

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

Put Walmart Data to Work Beyond Walmart.com

Walmart DSP in 2026 is a different product from the one launched in 2021: more TV, more audio, and Walmart data reaching places it never used to. The brands that get the most from it treat it as a measured test, with search ready to catch the demand.

Want your Walmart search and Amazon DSP running from one platform before you scale offsite? Book a demo with our team and we'll walk through your plan.