Walmart’s ad sales division just launched an initiative to stay competitive in the retail media race

• Walmart is rolling out new educational programs to court advertisers.
• Rivals Amazon and Instacart already offer similar programs aimed at grabbing bigger ad budgets.
• A big chunk of Walmart’s first courses pitch Sponsored Brands, a popular search ad format.

Retailers that sell ads are expected to pocket $104 billion by 2025, according to Morgan Stanley.

Walmart, which made $2.7 billion from ads in 2022, is one of the major power players, but it’s far behind Amazon’s $37.7 billion — and it’s facing tough competition from Instacart, which made $740 million.

To stay competitive, Walmart’s advertising arm Walmart Connect is launching an educational program called Walmart Connect Academy Ad Certification, to help advertisers fully understand how Walmart’s ad business works and what sort of products and ad units it offers.

Amazon and Instacart both offer their own ads certification programs. Amazon’s program covers the basics of its ad platform and adtech, as well as places where advertisers can buy ads, like the live-streaming platform Twitch. Instacart launched a program called Ads Academy in April that offers advertisers online courses about the best practices for creating Instacart ads.

These programs are important for retailers to grab bigger ad budgets and grow their retail media programs.

Greg Wolny, chief activation officer at ad agency Code3, said that the trainings will be helpful as more advertisers use Walmart’s platform. When Walmart first launched its self-serve ad platform in 2020, only a handful of companies used it. However over the past few years, Walmart has been steadily building out its partnerships, which has grown its retail media business by allowing agencies and ad-buying tech platforms to buy its digital ads, Wolny said.

More than 500 employees at WPP-owned GroupM participated in a beta version of Walmart’s program, and the program, which is free, is now open to advertisers of all sizes.

Walmart Connect’s new certification program also indicate which ad units are most important to Walmart. Eleven of its courses will cover the popular ad format Sponsored Brands, which can be seen at the top of search results on Walmart.com. Two to three courses cover video ad formats, and two courses provide an intro to retail media, according to Walmart. Next year, Walmart plans to roll out courses for display ad formats.

Walmart said that a certification will take 30 minutes to two hours to complete. Participants who pass the courses with a score of 80% or higher receive a digital certification that can be added to a LinkedIn profile, and the badges are valid for one year.