Retail media is moving into social

Walmart Connect is pushing retail media deeper into social apps, letting brands buy social campaigns with Walmart shopper data and tie them to sales. (walmartconnect.com) Walmart said on April 8 that advertisers can now buy some social media campaigns through Walmart Connect Ad Center on a self-serve basis, starting with Meta and with TikTok support planned later in 2026. The company also said brands can use the same Walmart audiences across social ads and Walmart’s own properties. (walmartconnect.com) The company said it is adding closed-loop measurement for Meta through LiveRamp’s data clean room and extending closed-loop measurement to TikTok and Pinterest. It also launched social ad formats that let shoppers add as many as 10 items to a Walmart cart from Meta, TikTok and Pinterest ads without leaving those apps. (walmartconnect.com) Retail media usually means ads sold by retailers against their own shoppers on their own sites, apps or stores. Walmart’s off-site media pitch now explicitly includes connected television, social media and the open web, using the retailer’s first-party purchase data outside Walmart’s digital storefronts. (walmartconnect.com) That expansion comes as the industry is still trying to agree on how to measure ads that influence store sales, not just clicks. A report covered by Sourcing Journal on April 13 said in-store digital media budgets remain constrained because brands and retailers are using different definitions of success. (wwd.com) That report, from In-Store Marketplace and Catalyst Media Consulting, argues that in-store media should be judged by “product movement” and proposes a common metric called Shopper Purchase Rate. The idea is to track whether media changed the rate at which shoppers bought a product, instead of forcing store screens into online-style metrics such as click-through rate. (wwd.com) The measurement fight has been building for more than a year as retailers try to prove that media sold near the shelf deserves the same budgets as digital ads. The Interactive Advertising Bureau said in a 2024 paper that most retail transactions still happen in physical stores, making in-store measurement a central problem for retail media networks. (iab.com) Walmart has been building beyond search and sponsored listings for months. In a March interview with Beet.TV, Ryan Mayward, senior vice president of retail media sales at Walmart Connect, said the company’s off-site strategy includes connected television, social feeds and audio, not just Walmart-owned placements. (beet.tv) EMARKETER has also described retail media as one of digital advertising’s fastest-growing segments, and Marketing Dive reported in January that the category was forecast to grow about 20 percent in 2025. In that same report, Marketing Dive said Walmart Connect had posted 33 percent growth in the United States in the prior quarter, outpacing the broader retail media market. (marketingdive.com) The thread running through both developments is simple: retailers want ad budgets that travel with the shopper, and brands want proof those ads moved merchandise. Walmart is adding more places to run the ads while the industry searches for one yardstick to count the sales. (walmartconnect.com) (wwd.com)