In this article, we will discuss the system of promoting your listings on the Walmart marketplace by newly introduced sponsored Ads or Performance ads which is known as Walmart PPC.
When it comes to selling on Walmart, Sellers should know, it’s not necessarily about being first to market, but being first on search-results. With more than 80 million products on Walmart Marketplace, it is way challenging to make your business and your products stand out. Learning how to advertise on Walmart Marketplace can help your company reach more shoppers and drive more sales.
What are Walmart’s Sponsored Products Program?
Walmart’s sponsored ads are run by a third-party named TRIAD RETAIL. The program, previously known as Walmart Performance Ads (WPA), works on the PPC model where a seller doesn’t have to pay unless a buyer clicks the ad.
Walmart’s sponsored ads are pay-per-click (PPC) advertising program based on keywords and product targeting that drive traffic to a desired product detail page so that you can display your listings in special places across the marketplace.
Types of ads in Walmart.com
Diversified advertising formats help your products get in front of not just a large audience, but the right audience. Hence Walmart’s Sponsored Products advertising is the right choice for boosting your visibility online and helping you get more sales. Here are a few of Walmart’s helpful advertising tools that you’ll want to tuck into your own marketing tool belt:
1. WALMART PERFORMANCE ADS
This option allows your company to advertise a product to shoppers across Walmart.com. With WPAs, Walmart Marketplace uses an internal relevancy engine to determine where and when your ads should appear. If you’re looking to drive sales, WPAs are an excellent choice as they direct traffic to your product.
Unlike traditional PPC ads, WPAs don’t rely on just keywords. If you’re familiar with the automatic targeting option available for Amazon ads, Walmart’s approach to WPAs is similar. Based on its tremendous amount of data, Walmart can find the best keywords for your ads to target.
2. NATIVE BANNER ADS
In most cases, native banner ads are shown the product’s category page. With a native banner ad, the Walmart Media Group places your business front-and-center for shoppers browsing Walmart Marketplace. If you’re looking to improve brand awareness, native banner ads offer an excellent option. They promote your brand, plus highlight a few of your products. You can also motivate users to shop your products, like by advertising a sale.
As we said, native banner ads appear at the top of a product category, like women’s clothing. The example below shows a native banner ad for Lord and Taylor. In this example, the ad appears for the broad category of clothing:
3. CATAPULT ADS
When you want to promote a specific product, your business can also advertise with catapult ads. A catapult ad appears at the top of product listings. It also features the text, ‘Featured Item’, to indicate that it’s a paid option. If you’re looking to increase the sales of a high- or low-selling product, you can use catapult ads. With this ad option, however, it’s essential for your business to maintain a low Advertising Cost of Sale (ACoS) to maximize your profits.
Unlike WPAs, catapult ads do not use the internal relevancy engine offered by Walmart Marketplace. Instead, these ads rely on product categories. In the example below, for example, the ad appears for the sub-category, convertible car seats.
Here is a “catapult ad” that leads from a product’s category page to its landing or detail page:
4. SITE SEARCH FEATURE ADS
A site search feature ad promotes your brand on a related product page. If users click on your ad, they go to a page that features all your products. Shoppers can then use filters to narrow their choices. While site search feature ads can help your business drive sales, they can also improve brand awareness. That’s why small and established companies can benefit from this Walmart Marketplace advertising option.
Below, you can see an example of a site search feature ad from Fruit of the Loom.
Where do Sponsored Products appear?
Walmart Sponsored Ads are PPC Ads displayed across Walmart.com platform to highlight your listings and drive traffic to your products. They appear in multiple places such as:
- Organic Search Results
- Homepage-Ad Banners
- Product Category Results Page
- Product Details Page
- E-mails
Walmart Sponsored Products are pay-per-click (PPC) ads that give your product listings preferential, high-visibility placement in the Walmart marketplace. When someone types in a relevant search term, they’ll see your items under a sponsored product banner. As part of the Sponsored Products package, your items will be listed in full color underneath an eye-catching banner reserved for sponsored products.
The following locations are available for both automatic and manual campaigns:
- Ads may appear in slots 3, 5, 6 or 12 on the first page of search results
- Only two slots will be filled by Sponsored Products at any given time
Overview of Walmart’s Sponsored Products Program
All the sponsored ads/featured product ads operate on the concept of CPC (cost-per-click) pricing model, where an advertiser is charged only when the user clicks on the ad, followed by an action of ad’s landing page.
- Each campaign must have at least one ad group
- Each ad group can have a maximum of 2,000 items
- Your bidding strategy is determined at the campaign level. For example, a Manual campaign will only have Keyword Bidding Ad Groups
- You will be able to enable/disable an ad group after the campaign has gone live
- The sum of the total budgets across all ad groups within a campaign must be equal to or less than the total budget of the campaign
- The sum of the daily budgets across all the ad groups within a campaign must be equal to or less than the daily budget of the campaign
- Rollover budget at the ad group level will be added to the daily budget at the ad group level
Advantages of Walmart Sponsored Ads
Here are few main advantages you will have using Walmart WPA:
- Boosting sales
- Defending against competitive product launches
- Enhancing seasonal campaigns
- Helping you discover new audiences and keywords for listings
- Improving organic ranking by increasing conversions and traffic
- Presenting your product to Walmart’s massive daily audience
Automatic vs Manual: Which option to choose?
Though for both types of campaigns minimum daily spend is $100 and the minimum campaign budget is $1,000, there are obviously differences in the strategy of these 2. We can point out some major differences for you:
| Subject | Automatic Campaigns | Manual Campaigns |
| placements | Ads are eligible for all WPA placements | Ads are eligible for search in-grid only |
| Bids | Bids are set at the product level | Bids are set at the keyword match type level (broad, phrase, exact) |
| Sponsored Product Carousels and Buy Box banners | Available | Not available |
| Keyword limit | Keywords will set by WPA | 220 keywords per campaign |
Who Can Advertise On Walmart.Com?
The Walmart self-serve PPC program is not yet available to all sellers. Participation requires approval from Walmart based on the seller’s meeting select performance criteria on Walmart.com.
Though you might be eligible, you should keep in mind that all your products may not be eligible for Walmart’s Sponsored Products Program. In order to be eligible, your product must appear organically within the top 128 results and must win the buy box.
How and where to begin?
You need to mail the following information at wpasales@walmart.com in order to confirm your eligibility:
Once the Walmart Media Group approves you, you get a Walmart Media Group Account, which helps you to manage your sponsored ads.
Difference between Amazon’s PPC and Walmart’s WPA:
Like Amazon, Walmart.com’s sponsored ads operate on a bidding system. Sellers bid on a list of keywords assigned to their ads. When a shopper’s search query matches that keyword and the seller wins the bid, their ad populates. There are some differences also. The major difference between WPA and Amazon’s Sponsored Products: Walmart requires a minimum budget of $1,000 per campaign and a minimum daily budget of $100 per day. Amazon, on the other hand, requires only $1.00 per day.
Walmart.com does not currently allow for negative keywords like amazon, but the platform expects to add negative keyword capabilities by the end of 2019.
Conclusion
Walmart may not be the first company that comes to mind when you think of advertising your eCommerce company and products. But the industry-leading retail corporation is no longer limited to brick-and-mortar stores. At the end of 2018, Walmart overtook Apple.com as the third largest online retailer. Their total revenue stood at $128.03 billion.
