Walmart Connect deployed its sales team to approach brands directly with on-site brand lift studies ahead of the 2024 holiday shopping season, according to Modern Retail. Three agency executives confirmed receiving multiple direct pitches from Walmart's team, a departure from the platform's typical agency-first approach.
The mechanism is straightforward: Walmart's sales representatives contacted brands and agencies offering to run brand lift studies—measurement tools that track awareness, consideration, and purchase intent—on campaigns running within Walmart's owned digital properties. The pitch bundled the measurement service with holiday ad placement deals, creating an incentive to commit spend early in the planning cycle.
This works because brand lift studies solve a persistent problem for advertisers on retail media networks: proving that ads drive outcomes beyond direct clicks. Traditional retail media attribution tracks last-touch conversions, but brand advertisers need evidence of upper-funnel impact. By offering lift studies as part of the deal structure, Walmart reduced the perceived risk of holiday spend and gave brands a measurement deliverable they could report internally. The direct sales approach compressed the decision timeline, bypassing the slower RFP cycles that typically govern retail media buys through agencies.
The timing matters. Retail media spending concentrates heavily in Q4, and platforms compete for budget allocation months before Black Friday. By reaching out directly in late summer or early fall, Walmart locked commitments before competitors could present alternatives. The brand lift study functioned as both a value-add and a soft commitment mechanism—once a brand agreed to run a study, the associated ad spend followed.
A small physical-product brand can apply this structure at modest scale. Identify where your customers concentrate: a specific Amazon category, a niche retailer's site, a specialty marketplace. Approach the platform's ad team directly and request a pilot campaign with built-in measurement, even if informal. Most retail media platforms offer self-serve dashboards, but direct contact with a rep unlocks access to beta features, measurement tools, and preferential placement.
Frame the ask around learning, not spending. Propose a $2,000-$5,000 test campaign with a specific question: does an on-site display ad increase add-to-cart rates compared to search-only placement? Request weekly reporting and a post-campaign summary. Smaller platforms, especially emerging retail media networks at specialty chains, will accommodate this because they need case studies and advertiser adoption.
Document the results in a simple one-page summary: baseline metrics, campaign period, lift percentage, cost per incremental action. Use that document to negotiate better rates on the next buy or to secure internal budget if you're pitching a retailer buyer on increased trade spend. The study becomes your proof point, just as Walmart's brand lift studies gave advertisers justification to allocate holiday budgets.
The broader pattern is retail media platforms competing on measurement credibility, not just reach. As these networks mature, direct sales with bundled attribution tools will become standard. Brands that build early fluency in requesting and interpreting lift studies will negotiate better terms and waste less spend on unproven placements. The play is to ask for measurement infrastructure as part of every media buy, then use the data to iterate or exit.
Direct outreach with bundled measurement studies compresses sales cycles and reduces perceived risk for advertiser commitments.
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