Walmart-Vizio’s CTV measurement faces incrementality hurdle

Walmart provided potential advertisers some case examples: execs reported CTV campaigns running though Walmart Connect, its ad business, have already proven successful for advertisers with a median viewing rate of 44%, per a company news release. The retailer also pointed to coffee brand Café Bustelo’s campaign driving incremental household reach beyond linear TV and a new product placement integration with L’Oréal.

Categories like CPG, media and entertainment, pharmaceuticals, gaming and fashion have already started to adopt Walmart’s programmatic CTV inventory in the Walmart DSP and home screen offering, according to Courtney Naudo, svp of business integration and planning at Walmart Inc.

“… and we expect demand to continue growing as we continue to prove the value of our full-funnel advertising model,” Naudo said.

For other advertisers, however, incrementality remains a sticking point. Walmart’s connected-commerce-at-scale pitch hinges on whether it can offer true measurement capabilities, incrementality and interactive CTV shopping features.

What brands ultimately want to answer

After an initial test last year, an agency exec who spoke on the condition of anonymity said early point of sale results weren’t impressive. The agency had to create a custom analysis to track point of sale metrics, which didn’t show a huge impact. “That’s where it needs to be this more connected, clean room experience with audiences,” said the exec. 

Measurement has lost the company at least one brand’s business. Georgia-Pacific was in talks of partnering with Walmart Vizio for an experiment earlier this year, but the campaign never came to fruition, according to Laura Knebusch, senior vp of marketing and customer experience at Georgia-Pacific consumer products.

“Their measurement wasn’t quite where we needed it to be to execute a test, to truly understand incrementality,” she said. “But we would be anxious to do it, if they can solve for that.”

When asked about its ability to provide incrementality, Walmart pointed to its capabilities. Naudo said, “Vizio’s ownership of both hardware and the CTV operating system creates the foundation to help deliver tighter targeting, stronger measurement, and ultimately higher ROI for advertisers using Walmart Connect in CTV.”

Commerce execs say they’re interested in a unified identity solution — and integrating Vizio in the tech stack could be the first step in offering a holistic ad solution. The following months, they say, will be analyzing how Walmart postures data clean room capabilities to let marketers connect the dots between CTV ad exposure and purchase.

“Because it’s not just, ‘Hey, how did Vizio do,’ but ‘How did Vizio do within the broader context of everything you are doing at Walmart,’ which is what brands ultimately want to answer,” said Mike Feldman, svp of commerce at Flywheel.

Booming ad business

Already, advertisers are inking CTV partnerships to access off-site inventory. Last year, retail media networks (RMNs) were expected to sell $4.99 billion in CTV ads, according to research from MNTN, a CTV performance marketing platform. That figure will more than double to $10.28 billion by 2028.

The prospect of using Walmart’s audience data to better target shoppers while excluding past purchasers makes the deal with Vizio a rival to Amazon’s offerings, commerce media execs said.

That’s on top of Walmart’s already booming $6.4 billion global ad business and the approximately 150 million U.S. customers visiting each week online and in stores.

On its earnings call, the retailer reported “triple digit growth” in advertising with Vizio, according to evp and CFO for Walmart, John David Rainey. Rainey did not provide exact figures.

Walmart continues inching closer to the reality of becoming less a retail media network and more of an ad ecosystem in the same vein as Amazon, per the execs. “This is the first domino of what has proven to be a really successful model for Amazon, so it would give you every belief that Walmart could do it well,” said Feldman.

Marketers rethink success metrics

As Walmart’s Vizio deal continues to mature its unified account login experience, more pilots are expected later this year.

Acadia, a digital agency, is currently testing Walmart’s Vizio ad placements for a client in the seasonal home and garden category. It’s an awareness play to drive traffic to the brand’s in-store and online presence, according to Ross Walker, director of retail media at Acadia. The campaign isn’t meant to be a sales driver and the agency isn’t measuring ROAS (return on ad spend), Walker added.

“We’re not even really measuring engagements so much, because we’re not expecting people to be able to click through or engage with the ad,” he said. Instead, the agency is tracking the campaign’s ability to maximize reach and frequency with the target audience in addition to the downstream impact on in-store and online sales, he said.

Media by Mother has a CPG client piloting a CTV buy through Vizio and Walmart that will potentially roll out in Q3, according to Madeline Carmichael, programmatic lead at Media by Mother. Initial KPI expectations are around awareness with sales lift and conversion taking a backseat — standard for CTV buys, Carmichael added.

“…it’s a no-brainer to test it if we’re buying video through Walmart anyway, and just knowing we can link everything back to their sales data,” she said.