Dec. 16, 2020
By Richard Lehrfeld, SVP & GM, Walmart Media Group
Connecting brands with millions of Walmart customers every day – that's what we do at Walmart Media Group. Every year, 90% of America shops at Walmart. Our goal is to provide a brand-safe platform that enables advertisers to engage with customers at scale using innovative ad solutions. With Walmart Media Group, advertisers can meet customers where it matters the most – at the point of sale, helping them to purchase great products that will save them money and help them live better. As a result of this connection, we have increased our net new advertisers by more than 40% this year while delivering measurable improved Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) for them.
As we prepare to close the chapter on 2020 and head into 2021, I want to share how Walmart Media Group has met the evolving needs of our busier-than-ever American families amid the coronavirus pandemic while continuing to build advertisers' trust and delivering strong results for them. Here's how we did it.
Riding the retail media wave: Retail media has become an essential component of the advertising media mix, especially in light of COVID-19. Advertisers value the opportunity to offer personalized shopping experiences to customers, based on first-party purchase data and tie media spend to sales. In the case of Walmart Media Group, it means tracking sales both online and in-store at scale.
Tapping into the Walmart Advantage: The more ways customers shop with Walmart, the more relevant Walmart Media Group’s omnichannel platform becomes – both to Walmart advertisers and to the Walmart customers who want to be connected to your brand and products. This year, we've had our foot on the accelerator, expanding our pickup & delivery services so customers can get the items they need quickly and safely. In Q3 of this year, our e-commerce business grew 79%. With more customers purchasing online, resulting in increased web traffic on Walmart's digital platforms, the retail media business is experiencing the same acceleration in its momentum, too.
Nailing the fundamentals: Going into 2020, we knew that ad platform parity is table stakes. Offering easy access, transparency and full accountability in retail advertising is foundational to our success. With the launch of our self-serve API Walmart Advertising Partners Program and on-demand, at-scale omnichannel reporting solution Performance Dashboards, I'm incredibly proud to say we've made impressive inroads toward our goal. Since its launch this year, the Walmart Advertising Partners Program has helped increase revenue and is responsible for half of all Walmart Sponsored Products ads revenue.
Driving solution-oriented results: We've also made strides in being a chosen partner for our advertisers, beyond performance marketing campaigns. As we tackled advertisers’ needs in 2020, we found solutions to meet their challenges and help them meet their goals by being relevant and authentic in how they show up in market. We broadened our social impact by partnering with leading brands such as Unilever and Cottonelle, creating campaigns that could help communities in need through initiatives like United for America, the Crown Act and #shareasquare. We're proud to utilize our advertising platform as a catalyst for action by tapping into our omni-data to help drive meaningful conversations – not just measurable conversions.
Testing custom content solutions: From testing out ads on store TV walls and self-checkout counters to launching exclusive interactive content partnerships on-site, such as Walmart CAMP, Walmart Wonder Lab and more, we have rolled out innovative and creative content-to-commerce solutions to further improve the reach of our advertisers’ products and engage their customers at the right time and place.
Building a world-class team: Our associates are our greatest strength. We are a people-driven, tech-enabled organization. It has been incredible to witness our team come together, albeit remotely, to drive creative solutions and measurable results for our advertisers while also building a culture that prioritizes customer-centricity, pragmatic innovation, trust and collaboration as well as courageous ownership.
2020 has been a year of progress, momentum and a continued shift toward being solution-oriented to empower our advertisers to succeed in this fast-changing world of marketing and advertising. We have a long way to go, but we are working on a lot. And we’re excited for what’s in store for us in 2021 and beyond. And while the pandemic did not create the omnichannel customer, it solidified the expectation of a seamless in-app to in-store shopping experience. We’ve seen this firsthand. We are the forefront of retail innovation, and we’re looking forward to enhancing the shopping experience with an omnichannel future designed with the customer in mind. The customer is always number one at Walmart.
