How Walmart is helping brands and agencies use its first-party data in retail media

Walmart is linking its Luminate data platform to its retail media network via a new self-service tool to tap its vast data warehouse to shape display buys on the retailer’s own properties. The Walmart Luminate Insights Activation will initially be available to the data platform’s charter suppliers and their agencies before year’s end, so they can capture holiday data and shape 2025 planning, said Seth Dallaire, chief revenue officer of Walmart U.S., in a blog post. The move helps marketers apply Walmart first-party data more readily as they prepare for “signal loss,” Dallaire said, in a nod to Google’s expected phase-out of cookies from its Chrome browser by the end of the year. Check out the latest Ad Age events and award programs Dallaire was expected to talk about the move in a keynote presentation with MediaLink Managing Director Mark Wagman on Wednesday at the Possible conference in Miami Beach. Insights Activation links two pieces of Walmart’s strategy to build higher-margin revenue, including the Walmart Connect business, which grew 28% to $3.4 billion last year. Luminate is a data platform Walmart has built in recent years, driven by what CEO Doug McMillon laid out in 2021 as a strategy for better monetizing the retailer’s vast data trove. Linking Luminate to Walmart Connect through the self-service Ad Center platform won’t cost suppliers extra. But it will likely help generate more use of Luminate insights, said Ryan Mayward, senior VP of retail media sales for Walmart Connect. Previously, Walmart and supplier executives worked together to manually apply insights to their campaigns. Marketers use Luminate to answer questions about what customers are buying, where and how they’re buying (in terms of in-store, online for delivery or online for pickup), and why they’re buying, the latter questions answered through access to shoppers via surveys and focus groups, Mayward said. Luminate data and insights include category share, whether brands are losing share to rivals or acquiring more customers, whether customers are heavy or light buyers, and whether they might be trading down to cheaper products or smaller pack sizes. All those have implications for display ad targeting on Walmart web or mobile sites. Giving suppliers and their agencies the ability to see and develop plans around that data themselves opens the door for more frequent applications of it, Mayward said. “This has worked so well [through manual or staff support] that we just want to make it faster and easier for brands to activate based on what they’re learning,” Mayward said. Bimbo Bakeries USA was a pilot user of Insights Activation, and using it “led to enhanced consumer engagement and media outcomes that outperform category benchmarks,” said Jeff Hendrix, Bimbo’s VP of customer teams for Walmart and Sam’s Club. Currently, Walmart Connect also works with Luminate data to shape digital and connected TV campaigns off of Walmart-owned sites, but does so manually as it has with display onsite, Mayward said. Ultimately, the self-service tool application could be extended to those off-site uses, though there’s no schedule set for that yet. Media measurement blog Tracking TV, social and digital updates Click here

How Walmart is helping brands and agencies use its first-party data in retail media

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