Last week, our top Agency, Media, and Tech Partners gathered in New York City for our third annual Partner Connect. Together, we explored how brands are redefining the customer journey—finding new ways to connect, engage, and spark sales.

At Walmart Connect, that journey starts with scale—reaching more people, more precisely. It’s powered by solutions that connect customers from discovery to purchase. And it’s proven through signals that measure every dollar’s impact.

Here’s how it all came to life.

Making Connections: Engaging Customers, Wherever They Are

Each week, Walmart serves approximately 150 million U.S. customers1 across our stores and online. Earlier this year, customers made 17.6 billion searches² on Walmart’s site and app, and when it comes to in-store, more than 255 million customers visit Walmart and Sam’s Club locations around the world every week.³

That’s why Walmart Connect is built to follow the customer journey, wherever it goes—from where they’re streaming to where they’re discovering items in our stores. Our data-driven solutions keep brands engaged with their audiences. This creates meaningful connections for customers and delivers measurable results for brands.

Compared to non-ad exposed customers, customers exposed to a brand’s Walmart Connect ads were 6x more likely, on average, to buy brand items.⁴

Leveraging Walmart Connect’s solutions means you can engage customers and increase sales instead of choosing to do one or the other. Who knew? We knew.

Retail Media: Where Commerce Meets Entertainment

Commerce and entertainment are colliding boldly, seamlessly, and creatively. At Partner Connect, we explored how this fusion is reshaping the customer experience into one unified journey.

Together with VIZIO, we’re bridging the living room and shopping carts to connect brands with highly engaged audiences, delivering measurable results. Recently, we rolled out enhanced inventory and VIZIO home screen ads, and at Partner Connect, we announced the launch of a holiday bundle that connects VIZIO’s home screen with Walmart.com’s homepage—putting brands front and center during the holiday shopping season. Starting in November, advertisers will be able to track everything from in-flight delivery and engagement to end-of-campaign ROAS.

Our partnerships with Meta and NBCUniversal are also giving brands new ways to tap into major cultural and live sports moments with shoppable experiences. With Walmart’s multi-item Add-to-Cart solution, we’re unlocking frictionless shopping opportunities that turn everything from recipes to fandoms into clickable, buyable moments.

The AI Revolution: Smarter, Faster, and More Personal

AI is transforming advertising as we know it, from new customer shopping behaviors to unlocking greater efficiencies and enhanced capabilities. This means campaigns that adapt faster, perform smarter, and prove results with greater certainty.

At the event, we explored these shifts—new Walmart Connect offerings like goal-based automation, AI-powered bidding, autogenerated creative moderation and immersive formats are unlocking smarter, outcome-driven media.

There’s More in Store at Walmart: Turning Retail into Measurable Results

Walmart’s impressive physical footprint—with more than 4,600 stores across the U.S.⁵—creates a unique canvas for brand storytelling. At Partner Connect, we showcased how the in-store experience is rapidly evolving into a measurable, high-impact advertising platform.

Every step of the Walmart shopping journey can spark inspiration—from audio greetings at the door to high-traffic digital screens in departments like Electronics to even fuel stations—that can lead to measurable outcomes where intent is highest. Here’s proof:

• Deli screen ads helped Mondelez sell an incremental 50,000 units of Triscuit.⁶
• Self-checkout placements delivered an average 10% lift in purchase intent.⁷
• Experiential moments like in-store demos and events further deepen brand connection, with 54% of surveyed Walmart customers reporting they’ve joined one.⁸

We’re transforming shopping trips into memorable, measurable outcomes. When brands show up at the right time, big things happen.

Driving Fandom: From Play to Purchase

When creativity, culture, and commerce collide, the results can be game-changing. LEGO partnered with Starcom to celebrate Formula One with a campaign that went beyond traditional ads. Through CTV storytelling, in-store experiences, and a gamified racing challenge, the campaign turned casual viewers into passionate fans.

The result? More than 50% of buyers were new to LEGO⁹, proving that creativity and omnichannel strategy can turn fans into customers and customers into lifelong advocates.

The future of retail media is here, driven by innovation, fueled by creativity, and strengthened through partnership. Together with our partners, we’re shaping an integrated ecosystem built on scale, powered by solutions, and proven by signals—where discovery flows effortlessly into engagement and engagement seamlessly sparks sales.

#LetsSparkSales #PartnerConnect #WalmartConnect

Sources:

¹ Walmart annual report papers, March 14, 2025.
² Walmart first-party data, Jan-Aug 2025.
³ Statista, Weekly Customer Visits to Walmart, Retrieved September 19, 2025, No endorsement of third-party data sources.
⁴ Walmart first-party data, Feb. 1, 2023–July 31, 2024. Ad-exposed customers during a 14-day window prior to conversion. Includes all Sponsored Search, Onsite Display, and Offsite media ads from 26 impact studies across Food & Beverage, Consumables, Entertainment, Toys & Seasonal, and Home & Hardlines categories. Ad spend measured across brands’ full product portfolio.
⁵ Walmart first-party data, February 2025.
⁶ Walmart first-party data, October 10–25, 2024. Past results do not guarantee future performance.
⁷ Walmart first-party, May 2024–April 2025. Analysis only includes statistically significant positive lift from In-store ads paid campaigns that ran in the timeframe. Survey questions: Aided Awareness: “Which of the following brands have you heard of?”; Purchase Intent: “How likely are you to consider buying from each of the following brands in the near future, assuming it was available to you?”; Due to the given range of data, results may vary over a different period of time. Past results do not guarantee future performance.
⁸ Walmart Events Experiential Custom Survey, first-party data, Walmart Customer Spark Community, provided by Scintilla; survey conducted by the Walmart Connect Media Insights Survey team, October 2023.
⁹ Walmart first-party data, March 1 –June 30, 2025. Walmart Connect defines a new-to-brand customer as one who purchases a brand’s product on Walmart’s digital properties as a result of an ad campaign, after not having purchased the brand at or on Walmart for the 12 prior months.