Walmart Connect Outlines Next Phase of AI-Powered Retail Media
At CES 2026, Walmart Connect detailed how it is embedding artificial intelligence and agentic technologies across its retail media platform, aiming to make advertising easier to execute, more adaptive in-flight and more accountable in terms of performance.
The updates signal Walmart’s push to evolve retail media beyond static targeting and reporting toward systems that can anticipate advertiser needs, recommend optimizations and act on them in real time. Walmart Connect is positioning the effort as a step toward a more connected “intelligence layer” for modern marketing, powered by the retailer’s first-party omnichannel data.
According to a Jan. 6 Walmart Connect blog post, the goal is to reduce friction in campaign management while helping brands adapt faster to shopper behavior and prove results with greater certainty.
From automation to agentic advertising
A central theme of Walmart Connect’s message is the shift from AI-assisted tools to more agentic systems that can guide advertisers through planning, execution and optimization.
One example is Walmart’s advertising assistant, an agentic tool that helps power its broader “Marty” super agent first introduced last year. The assistant is currently in beta for sponsored search campaigns and allows advertisers to build, optimize and troubleshoot campaigns using conversational, plain-language prompts.
Through chat-based interactions, advertisers can receive recommendations related to bidding, keywords and billing, as well as access advanced research reports such as change analysis, impression share of voice and category benchmark opportunities. Walmart said early usage suggests advertisers are applying the tool in highly customized ways, with 97% of user queries being unique.
The advertising assistant is expected to roll out to all sponsored search advertisers in the Walmart Connect Ad Center later this year, with expanded capabilities planned over time.
AI across the full retail media workflow
Beyond campaign execution, Walmart Connect outlined several areas where AI is being applied to improve performance, creative development and insight generation:
- Agentic shopping environments. Walmart continues to test advertising formats within its conversational assistant/shopping agent Sparky, which allows customers to check product availability, compare specifications and support purchase decisions. As shoppers adopt AI-driven discovery tools, Walmart said it is exploring how brands can remain visible and relevant within these emerging touchpoints.
- Generative AI-powered insights and reporting. Walmart is using generative AI to translate omnichannel retail data into clearer performance intelligence. New end-of-campaign and path-to-conversion reports are planned for the Walmart Connect Ad Center in FY27, designed to make performance analysis faster and more actionable.
- Creative at scale. AI is also being used to speed creative production. Walmart said its Automated Creative Generator can reduce creative production time by as much as 80%, while tools like the Automated Brand Shop Builder help advertisers quickly generate lifestyle-ready assets for on-site placements.
- Internal AI support. Walmart Connect teams are using AI tools to scale strategic support for brands, including research assistants that synthesize documents and automatically generated brand insights newsletters powered by Walmart’s internal associate agent.
Together, these tools are designed to address a common pain point for retail media advertisers: managing complexity across formats, channels and data sources without adding operational burden.
Leveraging omnichannel scale and first-party signals
Walmart Connect continues to emphasize its access to first-party shopping data across online, in-store and pickup and delivery channels as a foundational advantage for AI-powered retail media.
By combining omnichannel signals with automation and predictive capabilities, Walmart aims to move measurement beyond historical reporting toward more real-time and forward-looking insights. The long-term vision includes campaigns that dynamically adjust spend and creative based on predicted shopper intent, as well as creative assets that can automatically adapt across display, video and in-store formats.
“We’re building the future of AI-powered retail media — one that is more intelligent, more connected and more accountable than ever before,” Khurrum Malik, vice president of business and product marketing at Walmart Connect, wrote in the blog post. “For advertisers, this means campaigns that adapt faster, perform smarter and prove results with greater certainty.”
What it means for retail media
Walmart Connect’s CES announcements underscore how retailer media networks are increasingly competing not just on reach or data access, but on how effectively they can operationalize AI for advertisers.
For Walmart, the strategy reflects a broader bet that AI-powered retail media will be defined less by individual features and more by how seamlessly intelligence is embedded across the entire advertising lifecycle — from discovery and creative development to optimization and measurement.
While many of the capabilities are still rolling out or in beta, Walmart Connect’s roadmap suggests that agentic AI will play an increasingly central role in how brands plan and execute retail media campaigns in the years ahead.
