Today’s marketing landscape continues to shift rapidly, making it imperative for marketers to make each ad dollar stretch further. And while it’s important to work with an efficient and effective omnichannel partner as the funnel collapses, the digital shelf remains at the foundation of any omni campaign strategy.
That’s why we continue to significantly expand our Sponsored Search advertising capabilities, to help brands and Marketplace sellers of all sizes get discovered by Walmart’s digital customers. Walmart.com has emerged as the second-largest eCommerce site in the U.S., with more than 130 million visitors every month1.
Thanks to our latest product investments, Sponsored Search performance is improving. For example, Sponsored Search advertising during the Holiday season in 2022 outperformed all previous years, with a 40% YoY increase in average ROAS and 28% increase in average conversions across all advertisers2. Here’s a snapshot of our latest enhancements:
Search-relevancy enhancements: We streamlined our ad-serving criteria to make all qualifying Sponsored Products ads eligible to appear in relevant in-grid results on search and browse pages. Ads can now qualify based on factors such as the advertised item’s contextual relevancy, customer intent, the item’s historical performance and others.
Advanced second-price auction: Combined with our recent search-relevancy enhancements, our new advanced second-price auction helps reduce your risk of overpaying for cost-per-click bids. In this model, the most relevant product – combined with the best bid – wins the auction. The winner pays the amount necessary to win based on relevant competing bids, which may be less than the winner’s maximum.
New search placements: We expanded our Sponsored Products inventory for ads to serve in in-grid placements 1, 2, 3 and 4 – this means your items now have more opportunities to surface at the top of searches, which can help boost product sales and lead to higher ROAS. For the rest of the search grid, two ads will continue to appear for every 10 results.
Variant bidding: This helps to boost product visibility and give customers more options that meet their needs. Use variant bidding to advertise any item in your catalog beyond the primary variation of your product – such as showcasing color and size options.
Expanded self-serve capabilities: Self-serve advertisers and eligible Marketplace sellers can now access Sponsored Brands, which gives products the highest search-page viewability3. And the Walmart Ad Center now offers a seamless onboarding experience to make launching Sponsored Products campaigns even easier. All Marketplace sellers are now automatically onboarded to the Ad Center.
Contact our team to learn more about our latest search advancements, what we have in store for this year, and how you can get started with us today!
