Walmart Connect Expands Social, Full-Funnel Offerings
Walmart Connect, the retailer's media network, recently expanded its full-funnel offerings to help brands make their social media presence more accessible, measurable and shoppable for their customers.
The retailer is offering self-serve access, closed-loop measurement and new shoppable formats to help brands reach customers in the moments that matter, ultimately driving them to make purchasing decisions.
Bringing Self-Service Access to Social Formats
Self-serve brand advertisers can now use social media through Walmart Connect to create integrated, full-funnel campaigns, starting with Meta and expanding to other platforms, such as TikTok later this year, according to the company.
With the latest additions, CPG companies and agencies can activate the same Walmart audiences across their social and on-site placements, helping brands reach customers across their shopping journey.
Brands can also launch, optimize and measure social media campaigns within the Walmart Connect Ad Center, giving them more control of each campaign and one place to manage and report on their full-funnel media, such as on-site placements like sponsored search and display.
Social media ads appear under the Walmart umbrella while featuring a brand’s messaging, bringing added credibility and trust to the ad experience for shoppers.
Social Media Adds to Sales
Walmart Connect’s closed-loop measurement offers a clear picture for brands in terms of how their investments on social platforms drive both online and in-store sales at Walmart. Closed-loop measurement via LiveRamp’s data clean room is now available for Meta, while closed-loop measurement is also available for TikTok and Pinterest.
“With Box Tops for Education, our goal is to motivate families to support their schools during a crowded back-to-school window,” Taryn Beck, General Mills’ director of customer marketing, said in a Walmart Connect blog post. “Walmart Connect social solutions, paired with Meta video and Walmart first-party audiences, helped us reach customers at scale and deliver standout performance.”
Making Social Media More Shoppable
Walmart has also introduced an add-to-cart feature on Meta, TikTok and Pinterest, shortening the path from inspiration to purchase in one seamless experience.
Instead of a multi-step process where shoppers had to leave other apps to add a product to their Walmart cart, they can now add up to 10 products directly to their cart from social ads.
Personal care brand Burt’s Bees participated in a beta test campaign that combined offsite display with social add-to-cart that drove 42% of ad-attributed sales. According to the blog post by Diana Finster, head of Partnerships Plus at Walmart Connect, 95% of those shoppers who added to cart made a purchase within a week of exposure.
