Walmart Connect is Walmart's self-serve advertising platform, and if you already run Amazon Sponsored Products, the core idea is familiar: you bid on placements, pay per click, and the auction rewards both bid level and product relevance. The difference is in the details, and those details matter because porting your Amazon Ads strategy directly to Walmart Connect without adjustment is one of the most common ways sellers waste early budget on the platform.
Key Takeaways
- Walmart Connect advertising runs through the Walmart Connect Ad Center, accessible with your Seller Center credentials.
- Sponsored Products is the most accessible ad type for marketplace sellers. Sponsored Brands and Sponsored Videos may require brand owner or authorized brand representative status.
- Walmart's auction weights both your bid and your product's relevance, and it also considers retail readiness factors like listing quality score and Buy Box ownership.
- Winning the Buy Box is a prerequisite for ad eligibility on Walmart, which differs from Amazon's model.
- Measurement on Walmart Connect uses closed-loop first-party data that can attribute sales across Walmart's website, app, and physical stores.
- Amazon-trained sellers often under-invest early, over-bid without fixing listing quality first, or pause campaigns before the algorithm has enough data.
What Is Walmart Connect and Who Can Use It?
Walmart Connect is Walmart's retail media advertising platform. It gives marketplace sellers and brand suppliers access to self-serve ad products that place products in front of shoppers on Walmart.com and the Walmart app. The platform is managed through the Walmart Connect Ad Center, which you access by signing in with your existing Seller Center or Supplier Center account.
The platform operates at two tiers. The Small Business tier is where most marketplace sellers start. It includes Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands, and Sponsored Videos, plus Onsite Display. The Enterprise tier adds Sponsored Search, a wider Onsite Display offering, Brand Shop and Shelf, Offsite Media, and Store Ads. This guide focuses on the Small Business / marketplace seller tier.
Walmart Connect is separate from Walmart Marketplace account management. Running ads does not replace the work of setting up clean listings, maintaining account health, or managing fulfillment. Ads amplify what is already working. They do not fix broken listings or win placements for products that are not Buy Box eligible.
What Ad Types Are Available to Marketplace Sellers?
Three ad formats are the practical starting point for Amazon sellers moving to Walmart Connect.
Sponsored Products
Sponsored Products is the most accessible ad type and the closest equivalent to Amazon Sponsored Products. Ads run on a cost-per-click (CPC) model and appear across several placements on Walmart.com and the app: search in-grid results, browse carousels, the Buy Box area, "My Items" in-grid placements (targeting existing customers), and "Stock Up" prompts. You pay only when a shopper clicks the ad.
When setting up a Sponsored Products campaign, you can choose automatic targeting, where Walmart's system selects relevant keywords and placements based on your product data, or manual targeting, where you specify the keywords yourself. For sellers new to Walmart Connect, automatic targeting is a practical starting point to gather data before moving to manual.
Sponsored Brands
Sponsored Brands places your brand prominently at the top of relevant search result pages and browse pages (desktop and mobile web). Each Sponsored Brands ad can feature up to four products, chosen by Walmart's algorithm from up to ten items you include in the campaign. The ad also carries your brand logo and messaging. Sponsored Brands runs on a CPC model and sends shoppers to a destination page of your choice: a search results page, a product detail page, or your Brand Shop or Shelf.
Eligibility note: Based on Walmart Connect's published documentation, Sponsored Brands appears to be available to eligible brand owners and authorized brand representatives. Verify current eligibility requirements in the Advertising Help Center before building a campaign plan that depends on this format.
Sponsored Videos
Sponsored Videos places short video ads (between five and 45 seconds, per Walmart Connect's published specs) within search results. The format is keyword-targeted and CPC-billed, sending shoppers directly to your product detail page on click. Walmart Connect positions this format as an awareness and consideration tool, with documented data suggesting a significant share of attributed sales come from new-to-brand customers.
Eligibility note: Sponsored Videos also appears to require brand owner or authorized brand representative status. Verify current eligibility in the Advertising Help Center.
Onsite Display
Onsite Display is available at the small business tier, though the targeting logic and placement details differ from the search-focused formats above. Confirm current Onsite Display options and requirements in the Advertising Help Center, as this format operates differently from search ads.
How Does Walmart Connect Differ from Amazon Ads?
This is the question most Amazon sellers need answered before they launch. The platforms share a CPC auction structure, but several structural differences change how you set up and manage campaigns.
| Amazon Ads Concept | Walmart Connect Equivalent | Key Difference |
| Sponsored Products | Sponsored Products | Both CPC. Walmart pairs your bid with product relevancy in the auction. |
| Sponsored Brands | Sponsored Brands | Both top-of-search. Walmart may require brand owner / auth rep status. |
| Sponsored Brand Video | Sponsored Videos | Walmart's version is keyword-targeted in-search video. |
| Sponsored Display | Onsite Display | Different targeting structure; confirm current eligibility tiers. |
| Amazon Ads console (Seller Central) | Walmart Connect Ad Center | Separate login from Seller Center; access via advertising.walmart.com |
| Buy Box not required for ad eligibility | Buy Box required for ad eligibility | This is a structural difference that matters for product selection. |
| Listing quality as a ranking signal | Listing Quality Score as a retail readiness layer | Walmart makes listing quality explicit and gates ad performance behind it. |
| ACoS (Advertising Cost of Sale) | ROAS (Return on Ad Spend) | Walmart Connect may report ROAS rather than ACoS; verify metric naming in the current Ad Center. |
| Amazon attribution (online only) | Closed-loop measurement (online + in-store) | Walmart can attribute sales across Walmart.com, the app, and physical stores. |
The Relevancy-Plus-Bid Auction
On Amazon Ads, your bid is the primary lever in the auction. On Walmart Connect, the auction pairs your bid with your product's relevancy to the shopper's query. This means a higher bid on a poorly matched or low-quality listing will not perform the same way it might early in an Amazon campaign. The relevancy weighting reinforces the retail readiness requirement: your listing needs to be in good shape before ad spend makes sense.
The Buy Box Requirement
Amazon sellers are accustomed to advertising products even when they do not hold the Buy Box. On Walmart, Buy Box ownership is required for ad eligibility. If your product does not hold the Buy Box at the time a shopper sees your ad, the ad will not serve. This means before you build a campaign, you need to confirm Buy Box status for every product you plan to advertise. Walmart's Repricer tool and Walmart Fulfillment Services (WFS) are two levers that affect Buy Box competitiveness.
Listing Quality Score
Walmart's Seller Center includes a Listing Quality and Rewards Dashboard that scores each item's listing quality. Walmart Connect's retail readiness guidance recommends aiming for a score in the "excellent" range (80–100% per the published guidance; verify current threshold). A low listing quality score does not prevent you from creating a campaign, but it reduces the efficiency of that campaign because the auction weights relevancy and because shoppers who click a thin listing are less likely to convert.
How Do You Set Up a Walmart Connect Campaign?
The steps below follow the Sponsored Products workflow as a starting point. Sponsored Brands and Sponsored Videos follow a similar flow with additional creative and eligibility steps. Confirm current interface details in the Advertising Help Center at publish time.
- Access the Walmart Connect Ad Center. Go to advertising.walmart.com and sign in with your Seller Center credentials. If this is your first time, you may need to complete account setup steps.
- Check retail readiness before creating a campaign. In Seller Center, review the Listing Quality Dashboard for the products you plan to advertise. Address any significant gaps in title, images, description, or reviews before launching. Confirm Buy Box status for each item.
- Click "Create Campaign" and select Sponsored Products.
- Name the campaign and set dates. Give the campaign a clear name that identifies the product group or objective. Set a start date. You can run campaigns without an end date for always-on activity, or set an end date for seasonal promotions.
- Set your daily budget. Walmart Connect uses a daily budget model similar to Amazon Ads. Verify current minimum daily budget requirements in the Ad Center. Start with a budget that allows enough daily clicks to gather data before optimizing.
- Choose your targeting type. Select automatic targeting to let Walmart's algorithm place your ads based on product relevance, or manual targeting to specify keywords and bids. Automatic targeting is recommended for initial data gathering. If you use manual targeting, enter keywords and set individual keyword bids.
- Select the products to advertise. Choose from your eligible inventory. Prioritize your best-selling items with strong listing quality scores and confirmed Buy Box status. Walmart Connect's own guidance reinforces this: products with high-quality listings are more likely to convert.
- Review and submit. Review campaign settings and submit. Campaigns go through a review process before going live.
- Monitor after launch. Check campaign performance in the Ad Center. Allow enough time for data to accumulate before making significant bid or budget changes.
How Does Budgeting and Measurement Work?
Daily Budget Structure
Walmart Connect Sponsored Products campaigns run on a daily budget. Budget unused on a given day does not automatically roll over in the way Amazon may smooth spend across a campaign. Verify current pacing and rollover behavior in the Advertising Help Center, as these details can change.
Key Metrics
Walmart Connect Ad Center provides campaign performance data including impressions, clicks, spend, and attributed sales. Walmart may report return on ad spend (ROAS) rather than ACoS (Advertising Cost of Sale), which is the metric Amazon sellers are more familiar with. ROAS is the inverse: if ACoS is 25%, ROAS is 4x. Verify current metric labeling in the Ad Center before building reporting templates.
Confirm current availability of a search term report in the Ad Center. Amazon sellers rely on the Search Term Report to identify converting search queries and add negative keywords. If Walmart Connect offers equivalent search term data, that data should inform keyword expansion and negation decisions.
Closed-Loop Measurement
Walmart Connect's measurement approach is meaningfully different from Amazon's. Because Walmart operates both a large e-commerce platform and approximately 4,600 physical stores in the U.S. (per Walmart's published data), Walmart Connect can attribute a sale to an ad exposure even when the purchase happens in a physical store. This closed-loop attribution uses Walmart's first-party transaction data and provides near real-time reporting in the Ad Center. For sellers who sell products that Walmart shoppers may purchase both online and in-store, this attribution gives a more complete picture of ad-driven revenue than Amazon's online-only attribution model.
Attribution Window
Walmart Connect uses an attribution window to define which sales to credit to an ad click or impression. Verify the current attribution window length(s) for each ad type in the Advertising Help Center before citing specific numbers. Attribution windows can change, and using an outdated window length will make cross-platform ROAS comparisons inaccurate.
What Mistakes Do Amazon Sellers Make on Walmart Connect?
Sellers who have built Amazon Ads expertise tend to make a predictable set of errors when they first run Walmart Connect campaigns.
Porting Amazon bids directly. Walmart's search volume and auction dynamics differ from Amazon's. A bid that works at scale on a mature Amazon category may over-spend or under-deliver on Walmart. Start with conservative bids, gather data, and adjust based on actual Walmart performance rather than Amazon benchmarks.
Advertising before fixing listing quality. Amazon sellers sometimes launch ads on listings that are adequate for Amazon but below Walmart's recommended listing quality threshold. The auction will not reward a low-quality listing with efficient placements, and shoppers who click will be less likely to convert. Run a listing quality check in Seller Center before spending on ads.
Advertising products without Buy Box ownership. This is the structural error that causes the most confusion. An Amazon seller may be accustomed to advertising as one of several sellers on a listing. On Walmart, ads only serve when you hold the Buy Box. Confirm Buy Box status product by product before selecting items for campaigns.
Pausing campaigns too early. Walmart Connect, like Amazon Ads, needs time to gather click and conversion data before the algorithm can optimize effectively. Sellers who pause after one or two weeks based on early ROAS numbers often misread the learning period as poor performance.
Ignoring new-to-brand data. Walmart Connect surfaces data about whether purchases came from customers new to your brand. For sellers expanding to Walmart to grow their customer base rather than just capture existing demand, new-to-brand orders are a more relevant success metric than ROAS alone in the early weeks.
Treating Walmart as a smaller Amazon. Walmart's shopper base, category mix, and purchase behavior differ from Amazon's. A product that dominates its Amazon category may face different competition or shopper intent on Walmart. Use Walmart's ad data to understand what's working on Walmart, rather than assuming Amazon performance will transfer.
A Scenario: Listing Quality Blocked the Campaign
A multi-category seller had been running Amazon Sponsored Products for two years and decided to expand to Walmart. The Walmart catalog was set up and the first Sponsored Products campaigns launched with a reasonable daily budget. After ten days, the campaigns showed low impression volume and the few clicks that came through did not convert well.
The seller paused all campaigns, assuming Walmart advertising simply "did not work" for the category. A review of the Seller Center dashboard showed that several of the advertised items had listing quality scores well below the "excellent" range. Product titles were shorter than Walmart's recommendations, secondary images were missing, and two of the best sellers had no customer reviews on Walmart yet. The auction was not favoring the listings not because of bid level, but because the listings were not competitive enough to serve at scale.
After improving the listings, enrolling eligible items in Walmart's Review Accelerator program, and relaunching with the same budget, the campaigns began generating more impressions within the first week. The conversion rate improved as the listings became more complete.
The detail that mattered: the listings looked fine to a seller who evaluated them through the lens of Amazon standards. Walmart's retail readiness scoring made the gap visible.
FAQ
Do I need a separate account to use Walmart Connect?
No. You access the Walmart Connect Ad Center (advertising.walmart.com) with the same Seller Center credentials you use for Walmart Marketplace. You do not need a separate advertising account, though you may need to complete initial setup steps the first time you log in.
Can I advertise on Walmart if I do not hold the Buy Box?
Walmart Connect's published guidance indicates that Buy Box ownership is required for ad eligibility. If you do not hold the Buy Box on a product, the ad will not serve even if the campaign is active. Confirm current Buy Box and eligibility requirements in the Advertising Help Center.
How does Walmart Connect bidding differ from Amazon Ads bidding?
Both platforms use a CPC auction, but Walmart Connect's auction considers both your bid and your product's relevancy to the search query. On Amazon, a high bid can sometimes compensate for weaker relevance signals in the short term. On Walmart, relevancy weighting makes listing quality a more direct factor in ad performance. Specific bid floor amounts and auction mechanics should be verified in the current Advertising Help Center.
Is Sponsored Brands available to all Walmart marketplace sellers?
Based on Walmart Connect's published documentation, Sponsored Brands appears to require brand owner or authorized brand representative status. Resellers should verify current eligibility before planning campaigns around this format. Sponsored Products is the broadest-access ad type and the most practical starting point for sellers whose eligibility is unclear.
What metrics should I track on Walmart Connect?
Start with impressions, clicks, click-through rate, spend, and attributed sales. Walmart Connect may report ROAS (return on ad spend) rather than ACoS. For sellers focused on customer acquisition, track new-to-brand order data if available in your Ad Center reporting. Verify current metric names and definitions in the Advertising Help Center before building dashboards, as terminology can differ from Amazon Ads and may change.
How long does it take for a Walmart Connect campaign to get data?
There is no fixed timeframe, but the same principle that applies on Amazon applies here: campaigns need enough clicks and conversions for the algorithm to optimize. Very low-volume markets may take longer to generate useful data. Avoid pausing or making large bid changes in the first week or two unless spend is clearly out of bounds.
Ready to Expand Your Advertising Beyond Amazon?
Walmart Connect advertising is a real channel, not a side project. The mechanics are close enough to Amazon Ads that an experienced Amazon advertiser can get campaigns running quickly. The gaps, specifically listing quality requirements, the Buy Box constraint, and the different auction weighting, are specific enough to trip up sellers who approach Walmart as a copy-paste extension of their Amazon operations.
If your team manages advertising and marketplace operations across channels and wants to run Walmart Connect campaigns with the same operational discipline you apply on Amazon, Qubeq can help structure that work. We handle Amazon PPC and advertising operations and other marketplace operations for established brands. If you are building out a Walmart advertising program and want an operations review, reach out here.