UpTrajectory Review

Walmart's advertising arm, Walmart Connect, is no longer just a way for brands already on its shelves to buy better placement. According to TheStreet, the retailer's global ad business grew 46 percent to nearly $6.4 billion in its fiscal year ended January, and CFO John David Rainey confirmed on the Aug. 20 earnings call that it is still growing at a 40 percent clip on a much higher base. The Vizio acquisition, completed in December 2024, gave Walmart a second screen: the ad-supported free channels on Vizio TV home screens now feed the same business as the sponsored listings on Walmart.com. The piece draws on an Oct. 19 Bank of America research note from a meeting with Ryan Mayward, SVP and GM of Walmart Connect U.S., to make its central point: Walmart is now capturing ad dollars from non-endemic advertisers, meaning brands that do not sell their products in Walmart stores at all.

For a small-business operator, this matters because the definition of who can advertise on Walmart's platform just widened considerably. If you run a local service business, a direct-to-consumer brand that has avoided big-box retail, or a company whose products don't fit the shelf model, Walmart's audience was previously closed to you as an advertising channel. That is changing. The sponsored listings on Walmart.com and the ad inventory on Vizio TVs are now available to advertisers who have no relationship with Walmart as a vendor. This also matters if you are a brand that does sell through Walmart: the auction for those sponsored slots is about to get more crowded, and the cost of maintaining visibility on your own retailer's platform is likely to rise as non-endemic buyers enter the bidding.

What is genuinely new here is the direction of the money flow. Retail media networks have historically been captive ecosystems: brands paid the retailer for placement because the retailer controlled the point of sale. Walmart Connect breaking out of that model, and competing for general marketing budgets rather than just trade promotion dollars, is a structural shift. The Bank of America note's framing of non-endemic capture suggests Walmart is now competing directly with Google, Meta, and Amazon for brand awareness and consideration budgets, not just retail performance spend. We are somewhat skeptical of how far this can go before Walmart's own shelf brands push back on sharing the platform, but the Vizio acquisition gives Walmart a media property that has nothing to do with shelves, which blunts that objection considerably.

The second-order effects are significant. For brands already on Walmart shelves, the entry of non-endemic advertisers means higher costs per click and a more complex bidding environment inside Walmart Connect. For agencies and media buyers, Walmart is now a legitimate alternative in the planning conversation for campaigns that would never have included a retail media network before. For Amazon, this is a direct challenge in the living room: Vizio's home screen inventory competes with Fire TV for the connected-TV ad dollar, and Walmart's first-party purchase data gives it a targeting argument that most streaming platforms cannot match. For consumers, expect more ads on your TV home screen and in your search results, with those ads increasingly reflecting what Walmart knows about what you buy, not just what you browse.

What to watch next: whether Walmart starts packaging its non-endemic offering as a self-serve platform for smaller advertisers, the way Amazon has with its DSP, or whether it stays a managed-service play for large brands. If self-serve opens up, small businesses with modest budgets could test Walmart's audience without a sales call. Also watch how Kroger, Target, and other retail media networks respond, because if non-endemic revenue works for Walmart, every major retailer will try to replicate it. In the meantime, if you are a small-business operator with a product that could plausibly appeal to Walmart's shopper base, it is worth asking your media buyer whether a Walmart Connect test makes sense now, before the auction gets as crowded as Amazon's.

Takeaway: Walmart's ad platform is now open to brands that don't sell in its stores, creating a new channel for small businesses and a more expensive one for existing vendors.