← Blog  /  Walmart Marketplace

Walmart Marketplace

Walmart Connect Ads Guide (2026): How the Platform Works, Campaign Setup, and Optimization

Walmart Connect is the most underused paid advertising channel in e-commerce right now. The platform is real, the traffic is real, and the competition is a fraction of what you face on Amazon. Most brands either aren't running it at all, or they're running it wrong, copying their Amazon campaign structure into Walmart without adjusting for the platform's different mechanics.

This guide covers how Walmart Connect actually works in 2026: the ad types, how the auction functions, campaign structure, keyword strategy, bidding, weekly optimization, and what good performance actually looks like. If you're starting from scratch or trying to fix campaigns that aren't performing, this is the reference.

How Walmart Connect Works (and How It Differs From Amazon)

Walmart Connect operates on a second-price keyword auction, you bid a maximum CPC, and you pay one cent above the next-highest bid. The mechanics look familiar if you've run Amazon Sponsored Products. But the similarity is mostly surface level.

Key differences that change your strategy:

Walmart's algorithm weighs fulfillment method. Items fulfilled through WFS (Walmart Fulfillment Services) get preferential placement treatment, similar to Amazon FBA. If your competitors are on WFS and you're seller-fulfilled, you're competing uphill both in organic ranking and ad placement quality.

Walmart weighs in-store sales. Walmart is a physical retail company first. Products with strong in-store velocity get a signal boost in the search algorithm that Amazon products never deal with. If you're a brand that sells at Walmart stores, your in-store performance affects your online search visibility. If you're a pure-play marketplace seller with no store presence, you don't have this signal, and you need to compensate with stronger digital performance metrics.

Fewer advertisers means different CPC dynamics. Walmart Connect has dramatically fewer active advertisers than Amazon on most categories. This means CPCs are lower, but it also means there's less historical auction data available to inform bidding. You're operating with less signal on Walmart, which makes campaign structure and manual bid management more important, not less.

Search intent is slightly different. Walmart.com shoppers skew more toward known national brands and value-seeking behavior compared to Amazon shoppers. Keyword research needs to reflect this, generic "best [category]" searches often perform differently on Walmart than Amazon.

The Three Walmart Connect Ad Types

Sponsored Products

Sponsored Products are the core Walmart Connect ad format. They appear in Walmart.com search results and on product pages, triggered by keywords you bid on. This is where the vast majority of Walmart Connect ad spend goes, and where you should start.

There are two campaign types within Sponsored Products:

Automatic campaigns, Walmart's algorithm determines which search terms to show your ads against, based on your product content. Use these for keyword discovery: run auto campaigns for 3–4 weeks, pull the search term report, and graduate converting keywords into manual campaigns. Auto campaigns are not long-term efficient, they're a research tool.

Manual campaigns, You choose the keywords and set bids. Manual campaigns give you full control over match type (broad, phrase, exact), bid levels per keyword, and budget allocation. Your mature campaign structure should be primarily manual, with auto campaigns running in the background for ongoing keyword discovery.

Sponsored Brands

Sponsored Brands appear as banner placements at the top of Walmart.com search results, above organic listings. They allow you to feature your brand name, logo, and up to three products in a single placement. These are higher-funnel placements: better for brand awareness and category conquest than direct-response conversion.

Sponsored Brands work best for established brands with multiple SKUs in a category, and for brand defense (showing your own brand name at the top when competitors bid on your brand terms). Don't launch Sponsored Brands before you have a mature Sponsored Products structure, the brand-level spend rarely outperforms well-run Sponsored Products for most Walmart sellers at the $500K–$5M revenue level.

Walmart Display (On-Site and Off-Site)

Walmart's display advertising breaks into two layers:

On-site display, Banner and carousel placements across Walmart.com pages (homepage, category pages, product pages). These run on CPM or CPC, targeting audiences based on shopping behavior and category interest.

Walmart DSP (off-site), Programmatic display ads served across the broader web, powered by Walmart's first-party shopper data. The DSP is Walmart's most powerful upper-funnel tool, it can target people who have visited Walmart.com, purchased in specific categories, or match lookalike audience profiles. Off-site DSP is a scale play, not a starting point. Most brands shouldn't touch DSP until their Sponsored Products foundation is performing well and they have budget to invest in upper-funnel brand building.

Ad Type	Where It Shows	Best For	Start Here?
Sponsored Products (Auto)	Search results, product pages	Keyword discovery	✓ Yes, first 30 days
Sponsored Products (Manual)	Search results, product pages	Efficient conversion, scalable ROAS	✓ Yes, ongoing foundation
Sponsored Brands	Top of search results	Brand defense, category conquest	After Sponsored Products
On-Site Display	Walmart.com pages	Retargeting, category visibility	Scale stage only
Walmart DSP (Off-Site)	Across the web	Upper-funnel brand building	Scale stage only

Before You Advertise: Listing Quality Requirements

This is the step most brands skip, and it's why their Walmart Connect ROAS never improves past mediocre. You cannot run efficient ads against a listing that doesn't convert. Every dollar you spend on Walmart Connect drives traffic to your product page. If the page doesn't convert, the ad fails, and Walmart's algorithm interprets low click-to-purchase conversion as a quality signal that depresses future placements.

What Walmart evaluates in listings before ads can perform:

• Item Content Score. Walmart scores each listing from 0 to 100 on content quality. Scores below 60 significantly limit organic and paid visibility. Target 80+. This requires: a keyword-rich title (75–150 characters), complete attribute fill (size, color, material, features), and a minimum of 4 product images.
• Customer ratings. Walmart requires a minimum of 3 customer reviews and a 3.5+ star rating before an item is eligible for paid placement on most high-visibility positions. Without this threshold, your ads may run but placement quality will be limited.
• In-Stock rate. Walmart penalizes items with inconsistent inventory in both organic and paid ranking. Consistent in-stock status is a prerequisite for efficient advertising.
• Main image quality. Your main image must be on a pure white background, show the product clearly, and be at least 1000x1000 pixels. Low-quality main images reduce CTR and signal poor content quality to Walmart's algorithm.

Campaign Setup: Structure for Scale

Campaign structure is the foundation of efficient Walmart Connect advertising. Get this right at the start and optimization is straightforward. Get it wrong and you'll spend months trying to read performance data that's too noisy to act on.

Keyword Strategy for Walmart

Walmart's search algorithm has a narrower keyword vocabulary than Amazon's. Shoppers on Walmart.com tend to search with shorter, more direct queries, fewer long-tail modifiers, more brand-name and category searches. This isn't universal, but it's a pattern worth knowing when you build your initial keyword list.

Where to find keywords for Walmart:

Walmart's search bar autocomplete. Type your primary category keyword into Walmart.com search and look at the autocomplete suggestions. These reflect actual Walmart.com search behavior, not Amazon's, not Google's. They're your most direct signal for what Walmart shoppers are searching.

Your auto campaign Search Term Reports. After 3–4 weeks of auto campaigns running, your own data is the most reliable keyword source. These are real searches from real Walmart shoppers that triggered impressions on your product.

Competitor item titles and keywords. Look at the titles of top-ranking organic results in your category on Walmart.com. The keywords in those titles are the ones Walmart's algorithm considers most relevant for that category.

Amazon keyword lists, with adjustments. Your existing Amazon keyword list is a starting point, not a direct copy. Remove modifiers that are Amazon-specific ("prime eligible", "FBA", "Amazon's choice"). Keep the category and feature keywords, then validate them against Walmart's actual search volume by running them in auto campaigns and watching for impressions.

Match Types on Walmart

Walmart Connect supports three keyword match types, similar to Amazon:

• Broad match, Your ad can show on searches containing your keyword words in any order, plus related terms. Highest reach, lowest precision. Useful in auto campaigns and early-stage discovery. Requires active negative keyword management to stay efficient.
• Phrase match, Your ad shows on searches containing your keyword phrase in order, potentially with words before or after. Balanced between reach and relevance. Good for category-level keywords.
• Exact match, Your ad shows only on searches that match your keyword exactly (or very close variations). Lowest reach, highest relevance. Use for your proven top-converting keywords where you want maximum bid control.

The structural principle: use exact match for your highest-value proven converters, phrase match for category-level coverage, and broad match/auto for ongoing discovery. Don't run all three match types for the same keyword in the same campaign, the match types will compete with each other for the same search terms, making your data unreadable.

Bidding Strategy: How to Set Starting Bids

The most common bidding mistake on Walmart Connect: setting bids based on intuition or by copying Amazon bid levels. Walmart CPCs are structurally different, usually lower, but the right bid for any keyword depends on your margin, your conversion rate, and your ACOS target.

The formula for maximum CPC:

For new campaigns without conversion data, you can't calculate this directly, you don't know the conversion rate yet. In this case, use conservative starting bids and let the data build before increasing. Starting at $0.40 to $0.70 for most Walmart categories is a reasonable baseline in 2026. Adjust after you have 50+ clicks per keyword.

Bid Adjustment by Placement

Walmart Connect allows bid modifiers by placement, you can increase or decrease bids for specific placement types:

• Search In-Grid, the standard position within search results pages. This is your primary placement volume source.
• Search Carousel, carousel placements within search results. Can have different conversion characteristics than in-grid.
• Item Buybox, the buy box area on product detail pages. Often lower conversion intent than search placements, but can be valuable for category conquest (appearing on competitor product pages).
• Home Page, placements on the Walmart.com homepage. High visibility, lower conversion intent. Use cautiously with budget caps.

After 30+ days of data, pull placement performance from your campaign reports. If one placement type is consistently above your ACOS target, reduce its bid modifier. If one is performing well below target ACOS (meaning it's efficient), increase the modifier to capture more of those placements.

The Weekly Optimization Process

Sustainable Walmart Connect performance comes from consistent weekly management, not one-time setup. Here's the process we run every week across client accounts:

Monday: Search Term Report review. Download the search term report for all active campaigns. Sort by spend descending. Flag any term with $3+ spend and zero orders, add as negative exact. Flag any term with 2+ orders at or below target ACOS, candidate for promoting to a manual exact match keyword if not already there.

Tuesday: Bid adjustments. For keywords with 30+ clicks: compare actual ACOS to target ACOS. If above target by more than 20%, reduce bid by 10–15%. If below target and there's room to capture more volume, increase bid by 10%. Don't make bid changes on keywords with fewer than 30 clicks, the data isn't reliable enough to act on.

Wednesday: Budget pacing check. Identify any campaigns that are hitting their daily budget cap before 6 PM consistently. Good campaigns hitting budget caps early should have their budgets increased, you're leaving conversions on the table by capping them. Underperforming campaigns hitting their caps should have their bids reduced, not their budgets increased.

Thursday: New keyword identification. Review converting search terms from auto campaigns that haven't been graduated to manual campaigns yet. If a term has 3+ orders and hasn't been moved, it's been waiting too long. Create the exact match keyword in the appropriate manual campaign.

Friday: Placement and product performance review. Monthly (or bi-weekly): pull performance by product. Any product with 50+ clicks and below 3% conversion rate is a listing problem, not an advertising problem. Flag for listing optimization. Any product with strong conversion rate and efficient ACOS deserves a budget increase and more aggressive bidding.

Performance Benchmarks

What does good Walmart Connect performance actually look like? These benchmarks are based on well-run accounts across multiple categories in 2025–2026. Use these as directional targets, not hard rules, your margins determine your specific ACOS target.

Common Mistakes That Drain ROAS

1. Running auto campaigns indefinitely without harvesting keywords. Auto campaigns are discovery tools. They generate high wasted spend at scale because Walmart's algorithm casts a wide net for relevance. Run them for discovery, graduate converting keywords to manual, and add negatives to keep auto campaigns focused. If your auto campaign spend is more than 30% of your total Walmart Connect spend after 60 days, your manual campaign structure isn't mature enough.

2. Setting bids without knowing your target ACOS. Most brands set bids by guessing or by matching competitors. Neither works consistently. Calculate your max CPC using the formula above. Every keyword with a bid above that formula's output is structurally unprofitable at scale, it might produce data, but it can't produce margin.

3. Mixing all products in one campaign. Your best-converting products will subsidize your worst performers if they're in the same campaign. Your ACOS metric will look average but your best products will be underfunded and your worst will consume disproportionate budget. Segment by performance tier and treat each tier differently.

4. Ignoring the listing while running ads. Ads drive clicks. Listings convert clicks into orders. If your Item Content Score is below 70, your main image is low-resolution, or your product has fewer than 10 reviews, the ads can't perform efficiently regardless of how well-structured they are. Fix the listing, then scale the ads.

5. Measuring only ROAS without tracking organic rank impact. One of Walmart Connect's biggest value propositions is the halo effect, ad-driven sales build organic rank, which reduces your long-term dependence on paid traffic. If you're only measuring ROAS, you're measuring half the equation. A 30% ACOS campaign that's building your organic rank position toward page 1 is more valuable than a 20% ACOS campaign with no rank impact. Track your organic rank monthly alongside your ROAS.

6. Not defending your brand terms. Even if you rank organically for your own brand name, competitors can bid on it and show above your organic listing. Set up a brand keyword campaign in exact match at a bid high enough to win your own search terms. The ACOS on brand campaigns is almost always excellent, these are high-intent, high-converting searches, and the cost of not running them is ceding your own brand name to competitors.

---

Walmart Connect is not a set-and-forget platform. But it's also not the black box that some brands assume it is. The fundamentals, clean campaign structure, disciplined keyword management, listing quality as a prerequisite, are the same fundamentals that work on every search advertising platform. What's different on Walmart is the opportunity size: the advertiser density is low, the CPCs are low, and the brands building ad infrastructure there now are laying groundwork that will be expensive for later entrants to displace.

If you're already on Amazon, the incremental investment to run Walmart Connect properly is lower than it looks, because most of the work (listings, creative, keyword research) overlaps. The channel-specific adjustments are learnable. The window to build early advantage is still open.

For more on how to structure your expansion from Amazon to Walmart: How to Expand Your Amazon Brand to Walmart Marketplace. And if you're trying to figure out what to budget for Walmart Connect: Walmart Connect Advertising Cost, CPC Benchmarks and Budget Guide.

Walmart Connect Ads FAQ

What is Walmart Connect and how does it work? Walmart Connect is Walmart's retail media platform. It includes Sponsored Products (keyword-triggered search ads), Sponsored Brands (banner placements at the top of search), and Walmart Display (on-site and off-site placements using Walmart's first-party data). The auction model is second-price, similar to Amazon Ads, you bid a maximum CPC and pay one cent above the next highest bid.

How is Walmart Connect different from Amazon PPC? Both run keyword-based search auctions, but Walmart weighs in-store sales velocity and WFS fulfillment in placement decisions. There are far fewer active advertisers on Walmart, resulting in lower CPCs but also less historical data. Walmart's search intent skews toward known national brands and value-seekers. Organic rank builds more slowly on Walmart than Amazon.

What is a good ROAS for Walmart Connect? For most brands, 3x to 5x on Sponsored Products is healthy. Calculate your target as (1 / target ACOS). If your margin allows a 25% ACOS, your target ROAS is 4x. Lower-margin categories need higher ROAS targets to remain profitable.

How long does it take for Walmart Connect to work? Expect 45 to 90 days before you have enough data to optimize meaningfully. The first 30 days gather baseline data. Days 30 to 60 allow for initial bid adjustments and negative keyword implementation. By day 90 you should have a clear picture of which campaigns and keywords are performing efficiently enough to scale.

Do I need WFS for Walmart Connect to work? WFS is not required, but it improves ad performance. Walmart's algorithm gives preference to WFS items in placement decisions and WFS items display the "Fast Shipping" badge, which improves conversion rate. Non-WFS ads can still run effectively but will typically convert at a lower rate than WFS competitors in the same search results.

Have more questions about Walmart Connect advertising? See our full Walmart FAQ →