Walmart Connect goes direct to brands with on-site brand lift studies ahead of holiday ad deals

Walmart Connect's sales team has begun contacting brand clients on its own, bypassing the agencies that typically broker such conversations, and putting on-site brand lift studies at the centre of the pitch.

Three agency executives said multiple clients of theirs had been approached, though they declined to identify which brands. Stella Rising, a digital media and marketing agency, is among the shops whose clients have been contacted. Walmart did not respond to a request for comment.

The offer targets the most contested question in retail media: whether a campaign on a retailer's network generated sales that would not otherwise have happened, or whether the retailer simply took credit for purchases that were already likely.

Measurement remains uneven across platforms, data sits inside walled gardens and incrementality is difficult to demonstrate, leaving marketers with fragmented, individually assembled approaches to their retail media budgets.

By running its own studies, Walmart Connect is competing over how retail media performance gets measured, not only over media budgets. That argument carries more weight in the fourth quarter, when finance and marketing chiefs press for harder answers on return on investment, said Lacie Edgeman, co-owner and managing director at the ad agency PrograMetrix.

The direct approach also puts Walmart's sales organisation in front of advertisers earlier in the holiday planning cycle, at a moment when retail media spending decisions are being locked in.