• by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, September 22, 2022

Are bigger TV business connections coming next?

Walmart's deals are moving the retailing giant closer to the advertising levels of its competitor Amazon, which amassed a huge coffer of $31 billion in ad revenues last year.

Walmart has struck a partnership with Roku to make TV streaming the next e-commerce shopping destination. Roku advertisers will receive insights on effectiveness with Walmart Connect measurement.

These moves might be just a stone’s throw from allowing Walmart Connect to sell some actual TV commercial time.

And for TikTok, Walmart Connect will provide advertisers with the opportunity to serve in-feed ads on TikTok with Walmart Connect's targeting and measurement.

But the key deal for many might be with Snap: Walmart says this is the first-time advertisers can buy Snap advertising units through Walmart Connect.

Looking at all this, with the Walmart deal to carry premium video streamer Paramount+ on its site again, similar to what Prime Video does for Amazon Prime -- makes its membership program Walmart+ a better, all-encompassing ecommerce membership site.

The company’s retail customers can get free access to an ad-supported Paramount+ subscription included in their Walmart+ membership, which has 11 million customers as of July, according to Consumer Intelligence Research Partners.

Right now, Walmart will be benefiting from having a big TV brand -- Paramount -- on its site. But where will it go from here?

In the near term, one doesn’t expect legacy TV ad-selling companies to give up control of their still-prized inventory -- linear TV networks or their newfangled streaming services -- to many third-party sellers, if at all.

Retail media is a growing area that can dramatically expand reach in the fractionalizing media world that legacy TV-based media companies now find themselves in.

Retailers have tremendous access to first-party/purchase data, which can be packaged in advertising inventory and sold programmatically.

What’s not to like -- especially when your traditional TV-based businesses are under enormous pressure?