sponsored products
A Beginner’s Guide to Walmart Sponsored Products
January 22, 2020
Keep your brand top of mind with Walmart customers

With 16 million searches every day on Walmart.com, brands can take advantage of Sponsored Products to get customers to notice their brand, consider their offerings and act. This guide is designed to help advertisers create successful Walmart Sponsored Products campaigns and turn their ad dollars into business revenue.

At Walmart, when we can connect our customers to the products they want through relevant ads, they win. And our advertisers win.

What is Walmart Sponsored Products?

Walmart Sponsored Products ads help customers discover and purchase products sold on Walmart.com. Ads appear in prominent, high-traffic placements such as Search In-grid, Buy Box and Product Carousel. Sponsored Products are native, cost-per-click ads that drive customers to Walmart's product detail pages.

Who may run a Walmart Sponsored Products campaign?

Walmart Sponsored Products ads are available to brands, Marketplace Sellers, vendors and agencies. The advertised products must be in stock on Walmart.com and win the buy box.

To be eligible for Search In-grid placement, products also must:

  • Appear within the top 128 organic search results
  • Rank higher than or equal to their organic search ranking
  • Be of the same category as the search query
  • Be of same product type as at least one non-sponsored product in the top 20 results
Why should advertisers invest in Walmart Sponsored Products?
  • To improve visibility for products that rank low in search
  • To increase velocity for best sellers, hot inventory, or seasonal items
  • To stand out among crowded categories where there is competition
  • To maximize profitable SKUs and increase share of wallet
How and when do Sponsored Products ads appear?

Walmart’s algorithm serves Sponsored Products ads based on the product’s relevancy and the cost-per-click (CPC) bid price. To determine relevancy the algorithm looks at qualities such as product title and description, click frequency and product category.

Where do these ads appear?

Search In-grid: In slot 3, 5, 6 or 12 on search, browse and category pages

search-in-grid-cropped

Product Carousel: On search, browse, category and product pages

product-carousel

Buy Box: Under the Buy Box on product detail pages

buy-box
What are the different types of Walmart Sponsored Products campaigns?

There are two types of Walmart Sponsored Products campaigns: Automatic and Manual.

Automatic campaigns are the easiest way to bid on Walmart.com. Easy setup, high-traffic placements, no keyword management and higher impression volume. Just enter all the product information and the Walmart search algorithm does the rest. Automatic campaigns are best suited for brands new to advertising, to launch new product launches and for brands interested in expanding their reach beyond existing customer base.

With a manual campaign, advertisers handpick their keywords they want to bid on and match types. Advertisers can also consult Walmart’s Keyword Analytics tool to weed out low-performing keywords from their campaigns. Manual campaigns are best suited for brands that are confident in knowing the keywords their customers use and have a long history with Walmart.com.

An Automatic campaign offers maximum exposure; a Manual campaign offers maximum control.

Key Performance Metrics

key-performance-metrics
How to get started with Sponsored Products?

Advertisers can launch and manage a Sponsored Products campaign on Walmart.com in two different ways:

One: Request access to the Walmart Sponsored Products self-serve platform. Click here to contact us.

Two: You can use a third-party AdTech platform. Get in touch with any of our official Walmart Platform Partners.

We understand advertisers have different needs and some may prefer to buy ads through third-party AdTech platforms to streamline their media buying - which is why we started looking at the best way to help brands scale, automate and optimize with us - that's how the Walmart Platforms Partners program was born. To allow advertisers more control over their campaigns, review real-time data they need to make informed campaign decisions.

Stay tuned for more updates from Walmart Connect. Look forward to hearing your thoughts, questions and ideas for us.

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