Expanding retail-powered social media

By Diana Finster, Head of Partnerships Plus, Walmart Connect

Walmart Connect is expanding its social media capabilities to include self-serve access, closed-loop measurement, and new shoppable formats to help brands of all sizes reach real customers in key moments that drive action.

At a time when every marketing dollar is under pressure to perform, Walmart Connect delivers performance that rivals — and exceeds — the industry at large. Among Walmart Connect campaigns that qualified for a sales lift study, for example, we saw 2.5x stronger incremental ROAS and 1.8x higher sales lift than social media industry benchmarks.¹

Advertisers can now drive brand impact and sales in one retail-powered social buy. In fact, advertisers who run Walmart Connect Social tactics alongside Onsite Display campaigns can see increased engagement and results, with up to 48% higher ROAS and 20% higher click-through rate vs. display-only campaigns.² Social media is an essential touchpoint in the customer journey, and we’re helping advertisers drive connected strategies with precision, performance, and accountability.

Democratizing access to social formats for more advertisers

For the first time, self-serve advertisers can use Walmart Connect-powered social media to create integrated, full-funnel campaigns — starting with Meta and expanding to other platforms, such as TikTok, later this year. This enables advertisers and agencies to activate the same Walmart audiences across their social and onsite placements, helping brands reach customers across their shopping journey, from discovery to purchase.

Self-serve advertisers can launch, optimize, and measure social media campaigns within the Walmart Connect Ad Center — giving advertisers more control of their investments and one place to manage and report on their full-funnel media, such as onsite placements like Sponsored Search and Display.

Social media ads appear under Walmart’s handle and feature a supplier’s or seller’s product—bringing added credibility and trust to the ad experience. Self-serve access is currently available for Meta and TikTok self-service is planned to rollout this half. An API for tech partners is also planned for later this year.

Connecting social media investments to real sales outcomes

We continue to expand closed-loop measurement across social platforms, giving advertisers a clear understanding of how their social investments drive both online and in-store sales at Walmart. Closed-loop measurement via LiveRamp’s data clean room is now available for Meta. Closed-loop measurement is also available for TikTok and Pinterest.

“With Box Tops for Education, our goal is to motivate families to support their schools during a crowded back-to-school window. Walmart Connect social solutions, paired with Meta video and Walmart first-party audiences, helped us reach customers at scale and deliver standout performance. The new Walmart Connect integration with LiveRamp for Meta ads measurement gave us new transparency into how social contributed to Walmart sales outcomes,” Taryn Beck, Director, Customer Marketing, General Mills.

Making social more shoppable

Finally, we’re introducing an Add-to-Cart feature on Meta, TikTok, and Pinterest, shortening the path from inspiration to purchase in one seamless experience. Instead of a multi-step shopping process where customers must leave those apps to add a product to their cart, customers can now add up to 10 products directly to their Walmart cart from social ads. For example, this can help simplify meal planning for customers, allowing them to easily shop for multiple food items or ingredients.

Burt’s Bees' participation in a beta test campaign that combined Offsite Display with Social Add-to-Cart drove 42% of ad-attributed sales, with 95% of shoppers who added to cart buying within a week of exposure.³

Add-to-Cart is currently available in beta for managed-serve clients in Meta, TikTok, and Pinterest.

Ready to get started?

Walmart Connect is helping advertisers connect more meaningfully with customers by making social media more accessible, measurable, and shoppable — sparking sales and awareness beyond the scroll. Reach out to learn more about getting started.

Sources:

1. Walmart Connects sales lift benchmarks analysis performed by Circana, September 2024–September 2025. Walmart Connect benchmark data includes campaigns that qualified for a sales lift data in either the Food, Consumables, Beverages, or Alcohol categories only. Industry benchmarks are provided by Circana. Circana is an independent third party and not affiliated with Walmart Connect.

2. Walmart first-party data, FY26 (Feb. 1, 2025–Jan. 31, 2026). Social tactics include Meta, Pinterest and TikTok. For Display + Social advertisers, only display campaigns with ≥14 days of overlap with social campaigns are included, aligned to a 14-day attribution window. Past results do not guarantee future performance.

3. Walmart Connect data: April 22-May 31, 2025.