Walmart Connect is pitching brands directly on lift studies to prove holiday ad performance before contracts close, according to Digiday. The move signals a tighter competitive race with Amazon and a shift in how retail media networks justify their rates. Instead of post-campaign summaries, Walmart is offering prospective advertisers documented lift in sales, traffic, and conversion tied to specific ad placements on Walmart's owned properties.
The mechanics are straightforward. Walmart runs a controlled test: one cohort sees the brand's ad, a matched control group does not. The retailer then measures the difference in purchase behavior across both groups using its own transaction data. Because Walmart owns the checkout, the attribution is closed-loop. The brand sees exactly how many incremental units moved, at what margin, and whether the ad paid out. Walmart shares these results during the sales process, not months later, turning proof into a closing tool.
This works because it removes the faith requirement. Most ad platforms ask brands to trust a dashboard, a third-party panel, or a modeled attribution window. Walmart is showing the register tape. For a CPG brand spending six figures on holiday placements, the difference between "we think this worked" and "this drove 4,200 incremental baskets" is the difference between a renewal and a budget cut. The retailer is also using lift studies to justify premium placements, demonstrating that a homepage takeover or search ad delivers measurably more lift than a standard display unit. That data supports higher CPMs and longer commitments.
The steal is simpler than it looks. A physical-product brand cannot run a full lift study without a retailer's transaction data, but it can borrow the structure. If you sell on a marketplace, request a brand analytics report that isolates traffic and conversion during a promotion or ad flight. Compare that week to a control week with similar seasonality but no spend. Document the delta in units, revenue, and repeat rate. Present that proof in your next pitch deck, your wholesale conversation, or your retailer co-op request. The format is a one-page chart: cohort, control, lift, cost per incremental order. If you are pitching a corporate gifting program, show the client a past campaign's lift study from another vertical, relabeled as a case study. The structure is identical.
For brands running their own email or SMS, the same logic applies. Segment your list, hold back 10% as a control, send the campaign to the rest, then measure the difference in purchase rate over the next seven days. Export that as a PDF and attach it to your next email sequence. The subject line: "Here's the lift from our last drop." You are training your customers to expect proof, which raises the bar for your competitors and turns your open rate into a trust signal. If you wholesale into independent retailers, offer to run a lift study in their store. Pick one SKU, run a small in-store promotion or endcap test for two weeks, then measure sell-through against a control location. Share the results in a one-pager and propose a repeat buy at higher volume. You are teaching the buyer that your brand brings documentation, not optimism.
The broader pattern is that proof is becoming a line item. Walmart is not running lift studies out of curiosity. It is using them to compete on credibility in a market where Amazon has spent fifteen years training brands to expect attribution. Any physical-product brand can adopt the same discipline at smaller scale: test, measure, document, present. The next deal does not close on the product. It closes on the proof that the last one paid out.
Walmart uses lift studies as a closing tool; you can borrow the structure with marketplace analytics or email holdout tests.
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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