In a retail landscape marked by the buzz of new media partnerships, the recent team-up between Walmart and NBCUniversal stands out as something different. A garden variety venture it is not, for the long-term implications of the tie-up are quite profound.
Sure, everyone loves frictionless, clickable commerce and catchy ads, but the game-changer on display here lies in the power of personalization. A personalization not of whimsical fancy but one fueled by the highest octane data imaginable, one that enables Walmart
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When it comes to the history or intersection of digital commerce and advertising, Google
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And, now Walmart wants a piece of the action.
Walmart, a consistent third place finisher in terms of where consumers start their online product searches (behind Amazon and Google), is interestingly enough, as discussed on a recent podcast by Chad Lusk, the former CMO at Hostess Brands and now Partner at the A&M Consumer and Retail Group, and according to recent research, the only player amongst the three just mentioned who has witnessed growth in this domain in 2023 relative to 2022. The percentage of consumers who identified Walmart.com as the place in which they start their online commerce searches grew from 31% in 2022 to 37% in 2023.
Amazon, by comparison, fell seven percentage points over the same time period.
Prior to the NBCUniversal announcement, Walmart’s shiny new advertising platform, Walmart Connect, already included the likes of Roku and TikTok. The NBCUniversal deal now just adds live sports into what is quietly becoming a quite powerful portfolio of Walmart advertising partners. While the lazy headlines might scream “ad potential” (my quotes), the real story is the beeline path Walmart is taking to become more knowledgeable about consumers’ interests, entertainment preferences, curiosities, and shopping behaviors than anyone else out there.
Because, put simply, Walmart has what Google and Amazon don’t.
Stores.
Over 4,000 of them in the U.S. alone to be quasi-exact.
Walmart is where the consumer is every day. Add to that the most critical underpinning that is consistent across every one of Walmart’s portfolio partners – i.e. that they all, in essence, stream commerce – and Walmart can offer its CPG ad partners a level of ROI never before seen in traditional broadcast media. Walmart can ultimately tie any click back to commerce both in-store and online.
After all, 90% of America lives within 10 miles of a Walmart store, and, according to Statista, 240 million people per week visit a Walmart store somewhere in the world.
240 million.
Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Amazon.
Early data bears all this out, too. This past week Insider Intelligence published an infographic on the relative cost per click across various retail media networks. Across the first quarter of 2023, Walmart stood out as the leader of the pack with a cost per click of $0.68, almost 30 cents better than Amazon and almost a full dollar better than Kroger
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And finally what about the live rights?
The live rights from the NBCUniversal deal are really just the icing on the cake. The number of actual live events that capture a nation’s attention are finite, making them some of the most valuable media properties of all. Walmart likely understands this fact, and just as it did with its addition of Paramount+ to its Walmart+ subscription, the NBCUniversal deal is just another example of Walmart upping the ante in its ongoing battle with Amazon and others in what shall henceforth be dubbed as the War of the Pluses.
Only time will tell if Walmart’s latest moves will indeed make it the preferred destination for advertisers in an increasingly competitive retail media network space, but all indications and supporting evidence suggest that this outcome could be more likely than not.
So, with that, grab the popcorn, sit back, and enjoy the show.
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