Walmart Opens Up Some In-Store Retail Media Screens To Non-Endemic Advertisers
July 31, 2024 by Dave Haynes
The rise of the in-store display aspect of retail media networks has had almost everything to do with the idea of promoting products and offers to shoppers when they’re in shopping mode inside bricks and mortar stores, but retail giant Walmart is taking the interesting step of opening up its in-store screens inventory to non-endemic advertisers – in lay terms brands that don’t have goods sold on Walmart shelves.
The publication Adweek is reporting how Walmart Connect, the store’s advertising arm, will be selling in-store ad time to everyone from QSRs to insurance companies. The new ad formats will start rolling out tomorrow.
“National non-endemic brands, known for their large scale brand-building campaigns, are now recognizing the untapped potential of in-store platforms to increase brand exposure,” a Walmart Connect spokesperson told ADWEEK via email.
The move is thought to be a response to Walmart’s biggest competitor these days, Amazon, and follows Walmart opening up its online retail media business to non-endemic brands this spring.
Non-endemic brands, Adweek reports, represent big-spending advertisers that can help Walmart grow its retail media ambitions. Amazon has also made a heavy push for ad dollars from non-endemic advertisers through selling streaming TV ads like Prime Video Ads. Walmart Connect made $3.4 billion in 2023 while Amazon made nearly $47 billion from advertising in 2023.
Walmart is pitching two positions for in-store ads: the TV walls and the screens at self-checkout kiosks. Checkout screens have always been a bit tainted by the simple reality that marketing products sold in store to people who are imminently leaving the store makes limited sense, but that doesn’t matter if the ads are for non-endemic products and services. At that point, it’s about eyeballs.
Walmart says self-checkout ads are seen by 105 million weekly shoppers when run across large regions of the U.S. When Walmart Connect was announced, it said it was “offering media activations on in-store TV walls and self-checkout screens with nearly 170,000 digital screens across 4,500+ stores.”
It’s a bit of an everything old is new again story. In the early days of digital signage, third-party companies like the original PRN were putting screens on their own (many) nickels in big retail environments, and selling advertising time. But it was rarely successful, both because of the capital and operating costs burdens, but also because retail media was an abstract concept for media buyers back then … AND because retailers started wondering why they were agreeing to allow screens in their stores to market products that often weren’t sold in their stores.
Now, with media top of mind for many retailers and big money being budgeted for retail media, store groups are running their own networks and not doing things like revenue shares with third parties.
That was tried in Canada back in the early 2010’s. Never worked well. There was audio on a few of the promotions that bothered the employees so much that they ripped the speaker wires out.