Walmart Eyes CTV, AI and Self-Service Tools to Build a Bigger Ad Business

Walmart is scaling its advertising business through self-service buying tools, APIs, performance advertising and partnerships, aiming to serve advertisers ranging from small brands to major corporations.

Connected TV is a major growth priority: Walmart is using its VIZIO acquisition, onn TVs and partnerships with Magnite, Yahoo DSP, YouTube, Meta and TikTok to expand audience targeting and measurement across television and digital platforms.

Advertising offers a high-margin profit opportunity, with margins above 70% versus roughly 5% for core retail.

Walmart is also investing in AI shopping tools such as Sparky, whose users and average order values have increased, while expanding into non-retail advertisers and international markets.

Walmart NASDAQ: WMT is expanding its advertising business beyond traditional retail media by building self-service tools, broadening its connected-TV capabilities and pursuing more advertising opportunities both inside and outside its shopping ecosystem, Walmart Connect U.S. General Manager Ryan Mayward said at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia + Technology Conference.

Mayward, who became general manager about eight or nine months ago after initially joining Walmart Connect in sales, said the business has evolved during the past several years from a managed-service publisher model toward a scalable advertising platform.

Earlier efforts centered on sponsorships tied to major shopping events and a nascent search business, he said.

The company is now focused on performance advertising, self-service buying tools, application programming interfaces and partnerships with service providers.

Mayward described Walmart’s marketplace and advertising operations as “symbiotic.” More third-party sellers can expand product assortment, attract customer attention and generate more gross merchandise value, while also increasing competition among sellers for consumer attention through advertising, particularly paid search.

Marketplace sellers compete through retail fundamentals such as price, shipping speed, product ratings, reviews and item-page content, but advertising provides another way to stand out, he said.

Mayward added that a broader advertiser base can make advertising revenue more diversified and potentially less exposed to weakness in any one industry.

He said Walmart Connect is seeking to make its tools workable for advertisers of different sizes, from a small brand spending $1,000 per month to a large brand spending $10 million per month.

Mayward said Walmart is particularly focused on connected television, including opportunities to make TV advertising more accessible to smaller and local businesses.

The company completed its VIZIO acquisition on Aug. 4, according to Mayward, and sees the platform as a way to offer campaign setup, goal-based buying, automated optimization and measurement that are familiar to advertisers using search and social platforms.

Walmart has enabled Walmart audience targeting and measurement on VIZIO inventory, and 2026 is the first full year that Walmart Connect advertisers have been able to use the offering, Mayward said.

He said adoption has been strong among large consumer packaged goods advertisers.

The company is also seeking to expand VIZIO’s reach by selling more VIZIO televisions and placing the VIZIO smart-TV operating sy...