It’s official: Walmart has joined the market for self-serve advertising. Self-serve advertising lets marketers place advertisements without any assistance from advertising sales representatives. This essentially cuts the middle man, reducing later costs.
Walmart is a huge company, comparable to Target and Amazon when we examine their products and services. By analyzing their new platform, we can understand how it pertains to advertisers, and how this changes the market.
What Does Walmart’s Self-Serve Ad Platform Entail?
When Walmart rolled out this new platform, it was originally as an alternative to Google and Facebook, to remain competitive in an ever-changing market. Walmart achieved this with third-party deals, partnering with brands like Flywheel Digital, Kenshoo, Pacvue and Teikametrics.
The company aims to help advertisers target customers through automation and offline Walmart customer data. To further the success of the platform, the company brought on new executives and engineers for support.
This Gives Brands an Opportunity to Expand
In online sales and marketing, consumer packaged goods (CPD), especially food and beverages, are one of the categories suffering difficulties in transitioning. Several brands have relied on brick and mortar structures to do business, so this an outreach opportunity for those looking to expand.
Since the pandemic this year, the online arena may present bigger opportunities than Walmart anticipated, especially since consumers are getting used to shopping online for safety.
Walmart Adds Convenience
Marketing shelf space is becoming a thing of the past, so brands are looking for an online presence in order to stay relevant. This lowers the costs and allows brands to access a platform that can reach consumers from the comfort of the web.
In fact, more consumers have transitioned to online shopping, especially during the wake of the current pandemic. Self-serve ads on an online platform allow brands to tap into a new market, and find opportunities to boost sales.
Walmart Knows Online Platforms are Preferred
Since CPD numbers aren’t where they could be, Amazon and other companies have taken notice. In fact, CPD is becoming one of the fastest growing items on Amazon Marketplace, as more people are seeking to shop online. Walmart is now taking note and devising up their own way to compete.
Online shoppers are known for purchasing products as soon as they find them. They’re normally in the market for instant gratification, whereas brick and mortar shoppers sometimes leave empty-handed. An online presence allows for a bigger selection, and more inventory because it’s in a warehouse instead of a store. There are now more opportunities for self-serve ads, and for marketers to reap the benefits of using an online platform.
These are Some of the Other Brands that Offer this Service
Walmart sets themselves apart with this service, because they can streamline and enhance advertisers’ ability to target the right consumers. They’re also able to project at the right times through automation and the Walmart customer data easily accessible online and offline.
Marketers can purchase sponsored product ads by participating in a direct bid auction-based marketplace, according to Marketing Dive.
Walmart was late to launch their self-serve ad platform. These companies offer a similar experience:
- Headway
- Zoomd
- Smadex
- myAppFree
- Appodeal
- ConsoliAds
- Adsperfection
- App Samurai
- Appreciate
- LinkedIn Ads
- Snapchat Ads
- Reddit Ads
- TikTok Ads
Walmart Ads vs. Amazon Ads
Amazon has always had the upper hand for ad services. Walmart entered the market knowing this, so their partners are giving advertisers control over their campaigns.
Walmart also offers their own version of Buy Box. It’s valuable because most sales such as Amazon’s come from this online device.
Brands must win placement and achieve top rankings in order to run performance ads with Walmart.
Walmart’s competition with Amazon has led the company to release an earlier version of Amazon advertising, which means there is room for improvement in their platform.
Walmart Also Launched Walmart Prime
To further the competition, Walmart also launched their own version of Prime called Walmart+ for only $98 per year. It offers perks such as same-day delivery of groceries, with merchandise, discounts on fuel at Walmart gas stations, and early access to deals. There are even announcements that Walmart will add video streaming to the mix.
Both of these launches working together have the potential to make Walmart’s self-serve ad platform even more desirable. It can bring in more customers and business for marketers. Walmart has always positioned itself as an affordable shopping platform. For those looking to save, Walmart creates more opportunities than other companies who charge more.
