According to Modern Retail, Walmart Connect deployed its sales team to directly approach CPG brand clients in the weeks before the holiday shopping season offering on-site brand lift studies. Three agency executives confirmed to Digiday they received multiple pitches from Walmart offering measurement services designed to justify increased ad spend and lock in holiday deal commitments before Black Friday.
The mechanic is straightforward: Walmart's ad salespeople contacted brands already advertising on the platform and offered to run brand lift studies measuring awareness, consideration, and purchase intent among shoppers exposed to their on-site ads. The studies run during the brand's existing campaigns, deliver results within weeks, and come packaged with recommendations for scaling spend during the holiday quarter. The timing matters. By offering measurement proof before brands finalize their November and December budgets, Walmart positions itself to capture incremental dollars that might otherwise go to Amazon or Meta.
This works because most physical product brands still allocate retail media budgets based on attributed sales, not aided awareness or consideration lift. When a retailer offers free or low-cost brand lift measurement, it shifts the conversation from cost-per-acquisition to full-funnel impact. A brand running display ads for a new snack line can now quantify whether Walmart shoppers who saw the ad are 12 percent more likely to consider the product, even if they don't click. That number justifies upper-funnel spend and defends larger budgets in planning meetings. Walmart also benefits from first-party data: it knows which brands are growing basket size or frequency and can tailor the pitch accordingly.
The broader pattern is retailers using measurement as a sales weapon. Walmart is not offering this service out of charity. By proving lift, they make it harder for a brand to cut spend or shift dollars elsewhere. The brand lift study becomes a budget defense document, and the retailer becomes the platform with the proof.
For a small physical product brand, the steal is to reverse-engineer the value of lift measurement and use it in your own pitch to buyers. If you sell through a regional grocer or specialty retailer, offer to fund a simple pre-post survey with shoppers in their stores. Use a tool like Typeform or SurveyMonkey. Survey 50 shoppers before your in-store demo or end-cap display, asking if they've heard of your brand and whether they'd consider buying. Run the demo. Survey another 50 shoppers afterward with the same questions. Calculate the percentage-point lift in awareness and consideration. Present the results to the buyer in a one-page PDF: your activation drove measurable lift, and you're willing to repeat it at scale if they expand distribution. Cost: under one hundred dollars in survey incentives. The buyer now has proof that your brand moves the needle, not just sales data lagging by weeks.
If you run your own direct-to-consumer site, apply the same logic to your email or paid social. Set up a brand lift survey through your ad platform or a third-party tool before you scale a new creative. Measure whether the ad increased unaided recall or purchase intent, even if conversions are flat. Use that data to justify sustained spend to your CFO or investors. Most small brands optimize only for return on ad spend. Lift data lets you defend awareness investments that pay off in quarters two and three.
The next move is to treat measurement as a negotiating tool, not an afterthought. Walmart is teaching the market that proof of impact is worth more than price concessions. Smaller brands should take the same approach: build the measurement into the activation, then use the results to secure the next deal.
Offer to measure your own brand lift and present the results to buyers as proof your product moves consideration, not just units.
Editorial & Disclosure Notice: This article was written with artificial intelligence from public sources and is published without individual human review. Artificial intelligence and other digital tools are also used for research, analysis, editing, formatting, and production. Errors, omissions, outdated information, or inaccuracies may occur. References to companies, brands, products, services, organizations, or individuals are for informational and editorial purposes and do not imply endorsement, sponsorship, affiliation, partnership, or approval unless expressly stated. All trademarks and other intellectual property remain the property of their respective owners. Opinions, analysis, estimates, and commentary are informational only and should not be construed as financial, investment, legal, tax, medical, procurement, or other professional advice. Information may be corrected, clarified, or updated after publication. Corrections or removal requests: jenny@pops4.com.
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