• by Wayne Friedman , May 8, 2024

Disney Advertising and Walmart Connect have inked a deal that will connect Walmart’s customer purchase data with Disney's internal streaming audience insights via its Disney Audience Graph in improve joint client campaigns.

The goal is to identify desired audiences and measure the impact of advertisers' campaigns, as well as to address "overlap" media placement issues.

“Simply put, we are enabling advertisers to plan, buy and measure in an automated way while bringing marketers closer to understanding purchase intent and true outcomes,” says Jamie Power, senior vice president of addressable sales for Disney. 

Walmart says that about 145 million customers  shop with the retailer in-store and online platforms, and with now Disney, advertisers can use that data for their full-funnel campaigns to reach customers “wherever they’re streaming Disney content.”

Walmart Connect, the retailer's retail media platform, which sells advertising -- in stores, online and elsewhere --  topped $3 billion in revenue 2023. Disney Audience Graph comes from 110 million households and 260 million device IDs.

Disney says it is the first time retail media data has been brought to programmatic channels across Disney’s streaming footprint. 

The companies say the deal between Disney Advertising and Walmart Connect's Partner Lab will also be a testing ground to improve connections across CTV, social, live-streaming and other areas.

Walmart's purchase data will sync with Disney's Audience Graph via clean room technology and through a private marketplace programmatically. 

This will give marketers “flexibility, a holistic view of reach and frequency and enable clients to activate and measure KPIs.”

Initial testing of the two companies data sets will begin in the second quarter 2024, coming from “select advertisers”  in categories including consumer packaged goods, consumer electronics, telecommunications, automotive, apparel, beauty and pharmaceuticals.<