Dive Brief:
- Walmart Data Ventures announced the beta launch of a self-serve insights solution inside its Walmart Luminate platform called Digital Landscapes that enables suppliers to track online shopper behavior before a purchase, per a press release.
- Users can analyze engagement trends and tracking sources that are driving traffic, including searches on Walmart.com and the Walmart mobile app as well as search engines and social platforms. Beta launched on June 5 with general availability to follow later this summer.
- The improved insights could help suppliers evaluate their marketing and sales strategies by allowing them to better allocate resources to boost reach and improve effectiveness of campaigns.
Dive Insight:
With Digital Landscapes, Walmart is looking to help suppliers answer questions about how customers find their products across the internet, how much time they spend before making a purchase and when customers are most likely to shop online. If it's able to do all that, Digital Landscapes could provide the kind of tracking and targeting data that is in demand by marketers amid Google's ongoing plans to deprecate third-party cookies.
Digital Landscapes is the latest launch from Walmart Data Ventures, a division launched in 2021 to manage Walmart's first-party data business. Walmart Luminate is the division's flagship product that has helped boost supplier engagement with its core retail and growing ad businesses. With the latest news, users of Walmart Luminate, the company’s data analytics product suite, can use insights drawn by analyzing daily engagement trends and tracking traffic sources, including search, social and Walmart's owned channels, to help suppliers optimize their campaign.
The company's U.S. advertising business, Walmart Connect, grew by 26% during the first quarter of the company’s fiscal 2025, per its latest earnings report. Overall active advertiser counts on Connect increased by nearly 19% during the period and growth from marketplace sellers was up more than 50%.
Walmart has continued to improve its retail media business by helping marketers use its stores of first-party data to build campaigns and drive sales through its owned channels. Along with acquiring smart TV maker Vizio, Walmart recently announced a collaboration with Disney Advertising that gives advertisers access to closed-loop measurement capabilities for brand campaigns across the CTV inventory on Disney+ and Hulu.