If you’re new to selling on Walmart.com, getting your products in front of the right shoppers can feel overwhelming. Walmart Sponsored Ads offer one of the most effective ways to drive traffic and boost sales—but diving in without a strategy can lead to wasted time and budget.
In this guide, we’ll break down the essentials of Walmart Advertising, showing you exactly how it works, what you need to get started, and the key factors that determine your success. Whether you’re launching your first campaign or just exploring your options, understanding the basics before spending a dime can save you from common (and costly) mistakes.
Let’s walk through everything you need to know to confidently start advertising on Walmart and maximize your ROI from day one.
What is Walmart Advertising?
Walmart Advertising is how you promote your products directly on Walmart’s online marketplace. It allows your brand to reach shoppers actively searching for products while skimming through Walmart.com, allowing you to increase visibility and, if done right, your ultimate sales.
Like Amazon advertising, in order to be eligible to advertise on Walmart.com you are required to have two things:
- Your products have to be in stock.
- Your products must own the buy box.
But how do you own the buy box? Your products must:
- Be consistently in stock.
- Competitively priced.
- Have on-time delivery with fast shipping.
- Have positive reviews.
Walmart Sponsored Products
They boost the visibility of individual products by placing them in prominent locations, such as at the top of search results or product pages.
These Ads are pay-per-click (PPC). You only pay when a customer clicks on them.
Ads are keyword-driven and optimized for products that align with customers’ searches. You’ll want to use these ads when you want to drive traffic to specific products, especially best-sellers or those with high margins.
They can appear in three locations on the website:
Search results
Product results after searching for “dress”: (For the editor: all of these screenshots were taken from Walmart.com)
Category pages
These are food tongs in the “Kitchen and Dining” category:
Product or item pages
These appear on a product page the customer will be looking at, below the buy box:
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Extra requirements
There are a few things you’ll have to take into account, though. For Search In-grid placement (the first example, where your products appear on search results), your product has to meet a few extra requirements:
- Rank higher than or equal to their organic search ranking
- Belong to the same category as the search query
- It must appear within the top 128 organic search results
- Be of the same product type as at least one non-sponsored product in the top 20 results
Campaigns
Campaigns are structured marketing efforts that help you promote your products to shoppers on Walmart.com or other marketplaces like Amazon. While keeping this in mind, here are the two Ad campaigns you can run with Walmart Sponsored Ads:
Automatic
Walmart’s system handles the targeting for you. You basically don’t have to do much other than provide basic information about your product. Walmart automatically determines where and when to show your ads while considering product relevance, customer intent, and search behavior.
Automatic campaigns have the following cons:
- Less control.
- Higher risk of wasted spend.
- Limited insights.
They save you a lot of time, though, and they definitely work better than a manual campaign run by an inexperienced seller. So take that into account. Plus, they give you a very important advantage: Automatic campaigns are great for discovering high-performing keywords and placements, as Walmart’s algorithm does the work for you.
Manual
As the name suggests, you are the one in charge of most of the factors and Walmart just displays your ads when a shopper’s search query matches your keywords or targeting criteria:
- You select the products to advertise.
- You define keywords or product targets to determine where and when your ads will appear.
- You set individual bids for each keyword or target.
This is a time-consuming road toward building an efficient ad campaign. You’ll need to do keyword research, bid management, and optimize constantly. Plus, you might miss out on opportunities that automatic targeting could uncover. However, the control you gain over your campaign is immense. You’ll be able to allocate your resources more efficiently. It’s a great option if you’re on a limited budget.
Some advertisers use a hybrid approach: start with automatic campaigns to identify top-performing keywords and placements, then transition to manual campaigns to refine targeting and maximize ROI.
Increasing ROI
Increasing your Return on Investment (ROI) is all about making data-driven optimization decisions regarding your campaigns. Let’s say you have a product with a great, optimized listing: your pictures are clear and reflect the product faithfully, descriptions are sparkled with relevant keywords here and there, and, of course, you have positive reviews. You have checked every item on the list. But your ad campaign isn’t actually working.
After the campaigns have been launched they start to gather data from the performance. It usually takes two weeks before you’re able to make some informed decisions. Here are some of the optimizations you should be looking at:
- Performance by device type – How are customers clicking on your ads? Is it from Walmart.com on a desktop, mobile app or mobile web? Use bid modifiers to increase bids on devices with better performance.
- Performance by placement – As we saw, sponsored product ads appear on the Page below the Buy Box, Search In-Grid or Category pages. Look at the campaign results and, again, increase bids on the placements with better performance.
- Walmart’s Keyword Analytics Tool – The Walmart Connect platform provides a great tool for identifying new keywords every week. It helps you understand which search terms customers use to find products, how those terms perform, and how to optimize your campaigns for better targeting.
Conclusion
With the right approach, Walmart Sponsored Ads can become an indispensable tool for growing your brand and achieving your business goals. But sometimes, you just can’t get all of it right. But not all hope is lost. That’s where you contact the BellaVix Team to help you out, increase visibility, and get great results!
Ready to Take Your Walmart Sales to the Next Level?
We know Walmart is competitive, but with the right strategy, the potential for growth is huge. Whether you’re just getting started or looking to scale, having a partner who understands the platform’s ins and outs can make all the difference.
By filling out the form below, you’re taking the first step toward streamlining your Walmart strategy, boosting visibility, and driving more sales. Let’s collaborate to optimize your listings, maximize your ad spend, and ensure your products meet all compliance standards—so you can focus on growing your brand.
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