The 2027 edition, for brands and Marketplace sellers
Walmart Connect is Walmart's advertising business in the U.S., where brands and sellers buy Walmart advertising. It sells ads on Walmart.com, the Walmart app, Walmart's stores and offsite channels, and it measures them against Walmart's own sales data. This guide shows how to run Walmart Connect ads in 2027: which ad type does which job, how the auctions and floors work, how to build a first campaign in Ad Center, and what changed between May and October 2026.
In November 2026 we checked every fact against Walmart's help center, developer documentation and SEC filings. Every source sits in the list that closes this guide.
Start here
Walmart Connect is the retail media business of Walmart Inc. in the U.S. Walmart describes it as a closed-loop, omnichannel commerce media business: brands pay to appear where Walmart customers search and shop, and Walmart reports the sales those ads drove online and in its stores. The difference between Walmart and Walmart Connect is simple. Walmart is the retailer; Walmart Connect is the unit that sells its audiences and ad space to suppliers, Marketplace sellers and brands that do not sell at Walmart at all.
The audience is the reason brands come. Walmart says it serves about 150 million U.S. customers a week across its stores, site and app, and grocery made up about 59% of Walmart U.S. net sales in fiscal 2026 ($285.5 billion of $483.0 billion, our arithmetic from the 10-K). In the Digiday+ Research survey of August 2026, 47% of marketers said they advertise on Walmart Connect, second only to Amazon for the fourth year running.
The business is growing fast. Walmart's global advertising business grew 46% to nearly $6.4 billion in fiscal 2026, including VIZIO, the TV maker Walmart bought in December 2024. Walmart Connect in the U.S. grew 44% in the first quarter of fiscal 2027 and 43% in the second (May to July 2026), both excluding VIZIO, and Marketplace sellers grew their ad spend by more than 50% in the first quarter. Walmart reports Walmart Connect's growth rate each quarter but does not break out its U.S. revenue.
Three groups advertise. Walmart suppliers (first-party, or 1P, vendors) need an active Supplier One account and a Supplier ID before they can open Ad Center. Marketplace sellers (third-party, or 3P) are onboarded to Ad Center automatically, and the Seller Center admin becomes the Ad Center admin. Brands that do not sell at Walmart, such as automotive, insurance or travel advertisers, buy offsite and in-store media through Walmart DSP and Walmart's sales team. Sellers pay by card or Seller Balance, with cards refused for invoices of $50,000 or more.
Every product you advertise in Sponsored Search must be published, in stock and winning the Buy Box. An item that loses the Buy Box stops serving ads until it wins it back, which makes price, stock and delivery speed part of your ad plan. Walmart's readiness advice is a listing quality score of 80% to 100% and fast shipping, for example through Walmart Fulfillment Services.
Agencies and software platforms reach Walmart through the Walmart Connect Partner Network, whose members alone get the advertising APIs. For a short profile of the network and when to bring in a team to run it, see our Walmart retail media network page.
The ad lineup
Walmart sells three ad types under the name Sponsored Search (often searched as Walmart PPC): Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands and Sponsored Videos. All three are priced per click (CPC) and bought self-serve in Ad Center. Onsite Display sells banners and video per thousand impressions (CPM). Offsite media, store ads and the free Brand Shop complete the set, and Walmart is testing sponsored prompts inside Sparky, its AI shopping agent.
Sponsored Products put a single item into search results and onto browse and item pages. Placements include the search grid, search carousels, the Buy Box slot on a related item's page (one per page) and Stock up, a grocery carousel that only Walmart suppliers can use. Ads fill at most 50% of a category grid, and a carousel holds up to 20 of them.
| Pricing | Per click, advanced second-price auction |
|---|---|
| Minimum bid | $0.30 manual, $0.20 automatic |
| Targeting | Automatic (Walmart picks the searches) or manual (your keywords) |
| Ad group limits | 2,000 items and 1,000 keyword and match-type pairs |
A Sponsored Brands ad is a banner of your logo, a headline, an optional custom image and up to four shoppable items, picked by Walmart from up to 10 in the campaign. It sends shoppers to a search page, a browse page or your Brand Shop. Marketplace sellers qualify if they are based in the U.S., China, Hong Kong, the UK or India, own a trademark registered with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and are onboarded to Walmart Brand Portal. Walmart says 69% of Sponsored Brands orders for Marketplace sellers came from new-to-brand buyers in its fiscal 2025.
| Pricing | Per click, $0.50 minimum per match type (since May 2025) |
|---|---|
| Creative | A brand asset from Brand Asset Manager; brand name 35 characters, headline 45 |
| Logo | JPEG or PNG, at least 300 x 180 px, up to 1 MB (200 KB recommended), 16:9 to 9:16 |
| Limits | 200 keywords, 10 items, manual targeting only |
| Review | Up to three days; brand assets up to 72 hours |
Sponsored Videos play one video per search or browse page, full width, muted, with your items alongside. Only registered brand owners get the format in self-serve. Walmart's creative advice: show the product within three seconds and land the message within five. For small and mid-size advertisers, Walmart says 91% of Sponsored Videos sales came from new-to-brand customers in fiscal 2025.
| Pricing | Per click, $0.50 minimum per match type (cut from $0.80 on July 23, 2026) |
|---|---|
| Length | 5 to 45 seconds, 30 or less recommended |
| File | 16:9, at least 1280 x 720 px, MP4 or MOV, H.264 or H.265, up to 500 MB |
| Captions | Required when the video has narration |
| Limits | 10 items and 200 keywords, manual targeting only; review up to three days |
Onsite Display runs banner or video ads across Walmart's site and app, targeted by shopping behavior, context, keywords or the whole site. Self-serve buying runs through the Display Auction, where you pick an objective (Awareness, Engagement or Conversion) and set a base and a maximum bid per thousand impressions. Marketplace sellers need a brand registered in Brand Portal, or must act for the brand owner.
| Pricing | Per thousand impressions, first-price eCPM auction |
|---|---|
| Minimum spend | None; Walmart recommends $4,500 per campaign a month |
| Item set | 25 to 100 items |
| Incrementality report | One campaign spending over $150,000 for 6 to 12 weeks, suppliers only |
Walmart DSP, a demand-side platform powered by The Trade Desk, carries Walmart's audiences offsite to CTV, social, audio, gaming and the open web, with sales measured back at Walmart. Social campaigns run on Meta, TikTok and Pinterest, and since 2026 Meta campaigns can be launched self-serve from Ad Center. Offsite display delivered a median of 52% new-to-brand customers in 2025, Walmart says.
Store ads cover screens, in-store audio, demos and sampling across more than 4,600 stores, measured for brand and sales lift. In an early proof of concept, Deli and Bakery screens lifted sales up to 5% for food suppliers.
A free branded page that suppliers and Marketplace sellers with a registered brand build themselves. It reports sales, units, orders, views, visitors and add-to-cart actions, and it can serve as the landing page for a Sponsored Brands ad.
The money mechanics
How much does Walmart Connect cost? Self-serve ads start at $10 a day for Marketplace sellers and $50 a day for suppliers, with Sponsored Products bids from $0.20, no monthly minimum and no minimum spend on Onsite Display. You pay in an auction, and what you pay depends on the format. Sponsored Search runs what Walmart calls an advanced second-price auction: you set the most you will pay for a click and pay only what is needed to win. Your product's relevance counts alongside your bid, so the highest bid does not always win. Onsite Display runs a first-price auction: the highest bid wins and the winner pays its bid, per thousand impressions.
| Format | Priced by | Minimum bid | Minimum daily budget |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sponsored Products, automatic | Click | $0.20 | $50 supplier, $10 seller |
| Sponsored Products, manual | Click | $0.30 | $50 supplier, $10 seller |
| Sponsored Brands | Click | $0.50 | $50 supplier, $10 seller |
| Sponsored Videos | Click | $0.50 | $50 supplier, $10 seller |
| Onsite Display | Thousand impressions | Your base bid | None |
Sources: Walmart Connect Advertising Help and Developer Portal. An optional total budget must be at least $100 for suppliers and $50 for sellers.
Budget pacing on Walmart is loose: unspent daily budget rolls forward, and spend on a single day can reach 2 times the daily budget. Walmart recommends at least $100 a day for a first campaign so ads stay visible through peak hours. If you plan a total budget, set it before launch: a campaign that starts without one cannot add it later. Ad Center's Auto Calculate splits a total over the flight, so $6,000 across 30 days becomes $200 a day.
Placement and platform multipliers raise a base bid for a slot (search grid, carousel, Buy Box) or a device (desktop, app, mobile web). When you use both, Walmart adds the percentages together, and there is no ceiling: a $0.75 bid with a 200% search-grid multiplier becomes $2.25. Set multipliers you would be glad to pay in full.
For what clicks and impressions actually cost in live accounts, see our Walmart Connect benchmarks, built from RMIQ-managed campaigns.
Build it in Ad Center
These eight steps build an automatic Sponsored Products campaign, then add a manual campaign, Sponsored Brands and Videos, and an Onsite Display test. The field names are Walmart's. Each screen is our drawing of that step, based on Walmart Connect's public help documentation as of November 2026, so your account may look different. Before the first screen, you need Ad Center access through Supplier One or Seller Center, 10 to 15 best sellers that are in stock and winning the Buy Box, and about $100 a day for 30 days, which is Walmart's own starting advice.
Select Create campaign at the upper right of the Dashboard or All Campaigns tab. Name it, choose Sponsored Products as the campaign type and Automatic as the targeting tactic. In an automatic campaign Walmart decides which searches to serve on, using your titles, descriptions, category and related products.
Under Scheduling & Budget, a start date of today puts the campaign live within the hour. Enter the daily budget; open Additional settings only if you want an end date or a total budget, since a total cannot be added after launch. Plan to run without pauses: Walmart says always-on advertisers see up to 19% higher ROAS than those who pause between promotions.
New automatic campaigns switch on two extras by default. Brand term targeting lets your items appear on searches for brand names, yours and competitors'. Complementary targeting places your item in carousels on the pages of products bought alongside it. Keep both on for a first campaign and judge them in the reports.
Dynamic bidding (Maximize orders) is the default and Walmart's recommendation for beginners. Fixed bidding keeps your bid as entered. Target ROAS cannot be picked at creation and is closed to new advertisers. Pick one and keep it: Walmart advises against switching an in-flight campaign between strategies. Leave bid multipliers empty for now, because they add up with no maximum.
Create at least one ad group and add items by item ID, name, keyword or brand, or upload a CSV. Group products a shopper would find in the same aisle; Walmart suggests no more than 50 to 100 per ad group, and Dynamic bidding works best with more than 10 items from one category per campaign. Put each item in one campaign only, or your own ads bid against each other. Set a bid per item, then select Launch Campaign. Do not click your own ads to check them: Walmart counts that as a wasted click, and you pay for it.
After 30 days, the search terms that sell are visible in the reports. Create a manual campaign for them. Search in-grid is always on, and Search carousel and Buy Box placements are optional switches. The Buy Box slot targets anchor items, which are the product pages you want to appear on. Include your own pages to keep rivals off them. On the Keywords tab, pick from up to 220 suggestions or paste up to 100 at a time, choose a match type and bid for each, and add negative keywords on their own tab. Negatives need Fixed bidding; switch from Dynamic first.
Open Assets in the left menu and create a brand asset: the promoted brand, a headline, the logo, an optional custom image and the landing page. Approval can take up to 72 hours, so do this first. Then create a Sponsored Brands campaign (manual targeting is selected for you), pick the asset, add 2 to 10 items and up to 200 keywords, and select Submit for review. It goes live once the name, logo, headline, URL, two items and one keyword are approved.
A Sponsored Videos campaign follows the same manual path: upload a 16:9 video, captioned if it has narration, add up to 10 items and 200 keywords at $0.50 or more, and allow up to three days for review.
In the Display dashboard, select Create campaign, then Auction. Choose Banner or Video, then the objective: Awareness (the default) buys viewable impressions at the lowest cost, Engagement buys clicks and Conversion buys attributed sales. The objective cannot change once the campaign is live, and learning takes about a week. Each ad group holds one targeting tactic, a base and a maximum bid, creative from Creative Hub and an item set of 25 to 100 items.
Who sets the bid
Sponsored Products offers three bid strategies. Sponsored Brands and Sponsored Videos are bid by keyword and match type, with a $0.50 floor.
The default. When Walmart judges a click likely to convert, it can raise your bid by up to 100%, and it can cut the bid by up to 50% on clicks it judges weaker, never below the minimum. It works on manual and automatic Sponsored Products campaigns.
Your bid is the most you pay, every auction. Choose it when margins are thin, when you test bids by hand, or when a campaign needs negative keywords.
Walmart sets bids to hit a return on ad spend you choose, on automatic campaigns only. Access for new advertisers is paused. Accounts that still have it can switch only existing campaigns that Walmart recommends for it. Each needs $50 a day, accepts targets up to 20% above the campaign's 28-day average and learns for 14 to 30 days; a pause of more than five days restarts learning. Since March 2026 Ad Center sends Target ROAS performance alerts, and a campaign moved off Target ROAS cannot return to it for 10 days.
Since August 2026, Walmart refreshes suggested bids daily for keywords already in a campaign, across Sponsored Products, Brands and Videos. Automated rules can notify you, move budgets or move bids when a condition is met, and out-of-budget alerts show the average cap-out time with estimated missed impressions and clicks. A budget that caps out every afternoon is losing the evening shoppers. Marty, Walmart's advertising assistant, answers campaign-specific questions in chat and can launch campaigns on command; it is in beta for select advertisers.
Searches you pay for
Manual campaigns target keywords in match types, each with its own bid. Match types run from broad, which reaches the most searches, to exact, which reaches the fewest and is the most precise. Keywords can be up to 80 characters. Walmart normalizes spelling, so near-duplicates merge and the highest bid is kept, and an ad group holds up to 1,000 keyword and match-type pairs. Keywords Planner, under Tools, suggests terms from past search traffic; run them as broad match first. For a second list built from your own brand and product terms, try our Walmart keyword research tool.
Since July 29, 2026, Sponsored Products campaigns can exclude searches with negative exact and negative phrase keywords: on manual campaigns, and on automatic campaigns that use Fixed bidding. Dynamic bidding and Target ROAS campaigns cannot use them. Each ad group takes up to 500 negatives. They block Sponsored Products on the search page only, and when a term is both a keyword and a negative, the negative wins.
Brand term targeting began in January 2024. Since June 2, 2025, competitor ads can take positions 1 and 2 of the search grid on your branded searches, which used to be reserved for the brand. Defend your own brand terms with a manual campaign and your own item pages as anchor items.
Walmart scores relevance from shopper intent, the quality of your item page, item engagement and how long the item has sold on Walmart, then weighs it with your bid. Walmart's optimization advice ties ads to the listing: a listing quality score above 80% and a break-even ROAS for each item. It also points to the top grid slot, whose add-to-cart rate Walmart puts at 6 times that of positions 2 to 10, on average (May to July 2024 data). Item alerts, added in June 2026, flag listing issues on the top five items in a campaign by sales, such as a listing quality score under 60%.
May to October 2026, and what is due in January 2027
Six months that changed the controls. Sponsored Products gained negative keywords, Sponsored Brands moved to Brand Asset Manager, measurement moved to one model on June 1, and Walmart opened its audiences to other buying platforms. Newest first, with what each change means for an advertiser.
Sponsored Brands deadlines. The API endpoints that create Sponsored Brands profiles retire on January 31, 2027, and from 2027 Sponsored Brands campaigns without a brand asset may be paused, with editing locked until one is attached. Move every live campaign onto Brand Asset Manager well before January.
Walmart Audiences inside Vibe. Since October 29, advertisers using Vibe, the self-serve streaming TV platform Walmart bought in August, can build CTV campaigns on Walmart Audiences, such as category buyers or likely buyers. Smaller brands and sellers get a self-serve route to streaming TV with Walmart data.
Onsite Display controls. Out-of-Stock Protection switched on for suppliers' auction campaigns, and end dates can now be added after launch. Out-of-stock items stop wasting display budget without manual checks.
Partner Connect: Spotify, Yahoo and live TV. On October 6 Walmart brought Spotify audio, video and display into Walmart DSP with closed-loop sales metrics, moved its Yahoo DSP integration to Alpha, and added addressable live TV from Warner Bros. Discovery channels. Plan Walmart audiences in the DSP you already use.
Search incrementality, one brand's test. In a QBR Media study Walmart published, a food brand cut Search spend by about 95% for one week in August and digital sales fell 35%: an estimated $2.15 in extra sales per $1 of Search. Test your own account before you cut.
Variant bidding for Brands and Videos. Sponsored Brands and Sponsored Videos can now bid on item variants; bids used to cover only the primary variant. Sizes and flavors can carry their own bids.
Fair-share display attribution retired. From September 1, Display reporting runs only on the unified model introduced in June. Display results before and after September 1 do not compare.
VIZIO's first full year in Walmart Connect. On September 9 Ryan Mayward, who leads Walmart Connect U.S., said big CPG brands had taken up VIZIO targeting strongly, and that some stores are testing end-of-aisle screens that know price and stock. TV and store screens are becoming targetable with Walmart data.
Brand Asset Manager is mandatory for Sponsored Brands. Since August 19, every new Sponsored Brands campaign uses an approved brand asset. Older campaigns keep serving but cannot be resumed, cloned or given new end dates. Build your assets now, before any seasonal push.
Display cloning. Onsite Display campaigns and ad groups can be cloned, and suggested bids went daily (see Bidding). A Display setup that works no longer has to be rebuilt by hand.
Vibe deal closes. Walmart completed its purchase of Vibe.co on August 4. Mayward later said it lets Marketplace sellers run streaming campaigns for the first time.
Negative keywords for Sponsored Products. From July 29 (rules under Targeting). Start by listing the search terms that spend without selling.
Sponsored Videos minimum bid falls to $0.50. The floor fell from $0.80 on July 23, which makes video cheaper to test on search pages.
Report columns renamed in the API. On July 15, Brand, Direct and Related attributed sales were retired in favor of Advertised SKU sales and Other SKU sales, and calls for the old metrics now fail. Remap any dashboard built on them.
Display retargeting. Onsite Display can now retarget shoppers by item, category or ad exposure, so shoppers who viewed your items can see your banners again.
One attribution model. From June 1, one deduplicated last-touch model covers Search, Display, DSP and self-checkout screens (see Measurement). Start new trend lines on June 1.
Store sales in Search reports. Sponsored Search reports added in-store sales columns over 3, 14 and 30 days, so store-heavy brands can see what Search drives in stores.
YouTube, in test. Walmart audiences reached YouTube through Google's DV360 in a closed proof of concept. Wait for wider access before you budget for it.
Walmart audiences in other DSPs. On May 28 Walmart offered its audiences and closed-loop measurement in Yahoo DSP on VIZIO inventory, through Magnite, as a closed proof of concept. Walmart DSP stays the full route.
Reading the numbers
Walmart's closed-loop attribution ties ad exposure to sales on its site, in its app and in its stores. Since June 1, 2026, one deduplicated last-touch model covers Sponsored Search, Onsite Display, Walmart DSP and self-checkout store ads, so each sale is credited to one ad. Walmart's advice is to treat June 1 as a new baseline.
What counts as a touch
Attribution windows
Default ROAS in Ad Center
Canceled orders
Sources: Walmart Connect Advertising Help, attribution overview and advertiser reports.
Ad Center's advertiser reports come in four kinds (daily, campaign, page type and platform) and default to a 14-day click window. They refresh daily with the previous day's data, and Ad Center and the API keep 62 days, so export what you want to keep. New-to-brand means a buyer who has not bought from the brand in the previous 12 months.
Because Sponsored Search's default ROAS counts online sales only, a brand that sells mostly in stores looks weaker than it is. Read the omni ROAS and the in-store sales columns next to it before you cut a campaign.
Attribution shows which ads were last touched; incrementality shows what they added. Walmart offers Search Incrementality for Sponsored Search and a Display incrementality report for large supplier campaigns. In October 2026 Digiday reported that Walmart's sales team was offering onsite brand lift studies to brands based on spend, with results up to nine weeks after a campaign.
A first quarter on Walmart
Walmart asks you to give a first campaign at least 30 days and to read impressions and clicks before sales. This plan adds one layer a month.
Walmart's own data supports the layering: advertisers who ran Sponsored Products, Brands and Videos together saw a 135% increase in new-to-brand sales compared with Sponsored Products alone (fiscal 2025), and sellers who added Onsite Display saw a 45% median rise in ad-attributed sales from new-to-brand buyers. For the money side, see how to plan your retail media budget for 2027, and for a brand that ran this kind of layered plan across retailers, read the Zack's Mighty case study.
Moving a playbook across
Amazon Ads is the network most marketers already use: 89% advertise there, against 47% on Walmart Connect, in the Digiday+ survey of August 2026. A playbook moved from Amazon needs four adjustments on Walmart.
| What changes | Walmart Connect | What to change in an Amazon playbook |
|---|---|---|
| Ad eligibility | An item out of stock or losing the Buy Box cannot serve Sponsored Search ads, whatever you bid | Fix price, stock and delivery speed before you raise bids |
| Bid control | Dynamic bidding is the default; Target ROAS is closed to new advertisers | Use Fixed bidding where you want hands-on control |
| Negatives | Since July 2026, exact and phrase, on Fixed-bid campaigns only, manual or automatic | Put the terms you need to exclude in campaigns where negatives work |
| Attribution windows | 3, 14 or 30 days, 14 by default, store sales included since June 2026 | Amazon credits 7 days for sellers' Sponsored Products and 14 for vendors, so compare only on matched windows |
Sources: Walmart Connect Advertising Help and Developer Portal; Intentwise for Amazon.
Price and performance comparisons live on our Walmart Connect benchmarks page, and the retail media guide covers the wider market.
Asked by Walmart advertisers
Walmart Connect is Walmart's retail media business in the U.S. It sells ads on Walmart.com, the Walmart app, in Walmart stores and offsite, and it measures them against Walmart's sales online and in stores.
Ryan Mayward leads Walmart Connect U.S. as Senior Vice President and General Manager. Walmart Connect is part of Walmart Inc. and reports inside the Walmart U.S. segment. It grew 43% in Walmart's second quarter of fiscal 2027, excluding VIZIO, and Walmart's global advertising business reached nearly $6.4 billion in fiscal 2026.
Suppliers sign in to Ad Center with a Supplier One account; Marketplace sellers are onboarded automatically through Seller Center. Then create an automatic Sponsored Products campaign with Dynamic bidding and 10 to 15 best sellers, and give it 30 days.
No. Marketplace sellers can run Sponsored Products and, with a brand registered in Walmart Brand Portal, Sponsored Brands, Videos and Onsite Display; Sponsored Brands also needs a trademark registered with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Brands that do not sell at Walmart can buy offsite and store media through Walmart DSP.
Automatic campaigns let Walmart choose the searches and placements from your product data. Manual campaigns target your own keywords and match types, with optional carousel and Buy Box placements. Start automatic, then move proven searches to manual.
Yes, since July 29, 2026: negative exact and negative phrase, up to 500 per ad group, on manual Sponsored Products campaigns and on automatic campaigns that use Fixed bidding. Dynamic bidding and Target ROAS campaigns cannot use them, and negatives block Sponsored Products on the search page only.
One deduplicated attribution model from June 1, negative keywords in July, a $0.50 Sponsored Videos minimum bid, mandatory Brand Asset Manager for Sponsored Brands in August, and Walmart audiences in Vibe, Spotify and other platforms by October.
Yes. Walmart Connect Academy runs an Ad Certification program with courses by ad type, including foundational Walmart DSP training built with The Trade Desk. It suits in-house teams learning Ad Center as well as agencies. API access is separate: only members of the Walmart Connect Partner Network get the advertising APIs.
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