Retail media took center stage at Cannes Lions this year, signaling its growing influence on the industry. Walmart Connect has been at the forefront of this shift, and we leveled up our Cannes Lions presence this year with an invitation-only fireside chat series at The Majestic, bringing together some of the industry's most influential voices to tackle pressing topics like AI, creativity, and innovation.

Throughout the festival, Walmart Connect leaders led impactful conversations that showcased how we help advertisers of all sizes win carts and minds through:

• Scale that moves with your customers: Walmart Connect reaches ~150M customers served in Walmart stores and online per week.¹ 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.²
• Connected solutions, full-funnel impact: Our data-driven tools meet every stage of the journey—awareness to conversion, discovery to purchase—with precision and purpose.
• Proven results: Closed-loop measurement links your media investment to real-world sales online, in app and in 4,600+ stores.³

In addition, we broke news and announced new partnerships, including:

• What’s ahead for Walmart x VIZIO: Seth Dallaire, EVP and Chief Growth Officer of Walmart U.S., spoke with Bloomberg to share more about the company’s vision behind the VIZIO acquisition and what’s next – such as rolling out VIZIO OS to other TV brands, including Walmart’s private label Onn TVs, starting later this year. The news was also covered in eMarketer.
• Retail media op-ed: Khurrum Malik, VP of Marketing, gave the industry a sneak peek at Walmart Connect’s vision for the evolution of retail media via an op-ed in The Drum.
• Influencer audience POC with Omnicom: The week kicked off news of our strategic partnership with Omnicom Media Group, testing how we can use creator channels to match brands with influencers who can help drive sales, through the power of Walmart audiences. Ryan Mayward, SVP of Retail Media Sales, spoke with Digiday exclusively about the partnership launch.
• Expanded live sports partnership with NBCUniversal: Walmart Connect and NBCUniversal announced the expansion of their existing partnership, bringing advanced audience targeting and cross-platform attribution measurement to NBCUniversal’s live sports programming, all powered by the immense scale and precision of Walmart’s shopper data. With this expansion, Walmart Connect and NBCUniversal are coming together to bring massive competitive scale for advertisers seeking to engage with highly valued sports viewers. Read more in Adweek, Campaign US and Digiday.
  

Highlights from the week

Day one

• Ryan Mayward and Jon Gibs, Group Director, Media Insights and Measurement, spoke with Omnicom and Beet.TV on several hot topics across the Croisette, including the latest in Walmart’s CTV strategy and its acquisition of VIZIO.
• Seth Dallaire spoke with Sir Martin Sorrell about the evolution of Cannes Lions, changing advertising and marketing models to meet consumer demand, and the growing presence of AI in the advertising business.

Day two

• Khurrum Malik spoke with The Wall Street Journal’s CMO Today on retail media entering its creative era.
• Diana Finster, Head of Agency, Media & Tech Partnerships, and Ryan Mayward appeared on panels and stages with Omnicom, Publicis, Pinterest, The Female Quotient and Next in Media to discuss pressing issues such as identity-driven marketing, commerce and culture, retail media and more.
• Seth Dallaire hosted P&G’s Marc Pritchard for a wide-ranging conversation that explored timeless marketing principles for the industry at large. The chat was covered exclusively in AdAge.

Day three

• Seth Dallaire hosted NBCU’s Mark Marshall for a conversation on how brands can harness the full-funnel storytelling power of live sports programming.
• Rich Lehrfeld, GM & Senior Vice President, joined Instacart, Northwell Health, and Deloitte to forces reshaping the consumer landscape, creating unprecedented new opportunities for CMOs.

Day four

• Bhanu Bhardwaj, Group Product Director for Data, Measurement and Offsite Products, Diana Finster, Khurrum Malik and Seth Dallaire spoke with Reddit, Digitas North America, Next in Media, WPP and NielsenIQ on hot topics like retail media and CTV, omnichannel strategy, creative commerce and more.

Learn more about how Walmart Connect helps advertisers win carts and minds at WalmartConnect.com.

Sources: ¹Walmart annual report papers, March 14, 2025. ~150M customers served in Walmart stores and online in the U.S. per week. ²Walmart first-party data, Feb. 1, 2023 – July 31, 2024; ad-exposed customers during a 14-day window prior to conversion. Includes all Walmart Sponsored Search, Walmart Onsite Display, and Walmart 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. ³Walmart first-party data, February 2025.