• by Maarten Albarda , Featured Contributor, July 13, 2018

I am reading an oldie at the moment: a book called “Made in America” by Sam Walton and John Huey. It was published in 1992, and I bought it for a buck at the local library book sale. I did not know much about Sam Walton and the history of Walmart, and this book delivers info on both.

Walton was obviously a man smarter than most. In a way, he reminds me a lot of Jeff Bezos, since he also started super-small, identified an opportunity in the market and relentlessly expanded on it to become one of the biggest in retail. And after an initially sluggish response, Walmart is now obviously all in on e-commerce and digital — perhaps one of the few who pose serious competition to Amazon.

It's only fitting, then, that Walmart also has its very own Walmart Media Group, which it began offering aggressively across platforms and media that reach the advertising community. This comes, of course, in response to the success that Amazon is having as it chips away at the Alphabet/Facebook duopoly (Amazon’s ad income is set to reach $20 billion by 2020, according to Forbes).

What does Walmart Media Group — launched in 2017 — do? Its website is remarkably sparse with information. I had to Google it instead and found better information (a better website, in fact) for the Canadian Walmart Media Group. There, we learn that: “Walmart Media Group is an advertising platform that intercepts shoppers along their path of discovery and purchase, both on and offline. Managed by a team of retail marketing experts, Walmart Media Group delivers tailored, data-fueled advertising solutions to partner brands, and supports them through end-to-end strategy and execution.”

So: it sounds like ad delivery and retargeting through the use of first-party data from Walmart. That is an attractive offering, because “everybody” shops at Walmart, including many shoppers who do not shop, or do so only occasionally, at Amazon and/or Whole Foods.

Walmart probably knows more about everyday grocery shopping than Amazon, especially about consumers who still buy a majority of groceries at the physical store. Add to that Walmart’s/Jet’s online purchase data, grocery delivery/pick-up order data and data from Sam’s Club, plus its financing and other data sources, and I bet the ad targeting and retargeting opportunities are pretty solid — perhaps broader and more diverse than Amazon’s.

This should make advertisers happy, but at the same time it expands Walmart’s frenemy challenge. When Amazon opened its ad business, advertisers were happy to have a proper challenger to Facebook and Alphabet. But at the same time, many dreaded having to make a deal with “the devil,” as they were uncertain who was getting the most out of a deal between an advertiser and Amazon. The same is true for Walmart Media Group.

I would say that FAWA — encompassing Facebook, Amazon, Walmart, Alphabet — is better than any combination that involves fewer letters. I expect Walmart Media Group to become a force to be reckoned with, just as Amazon has. After all, Sam Walton explained the success of Walmart in his book as follows: “Friend, we just got after it and stayed after it.” Expect FAWA to be your future acronym for online advertising.