How Walmart Is Using Omnichannel Marketing to Change How Products Get Found

Steven Bertram, president of 8th & Walton, and Chase Binnie, CEO of RetailWire, help vendors do business with the world’s biggest retailer as it changes (Terrance Armstard)

For companies supplying Walmart or selling goods through it, the keyword in Bentonville is shifting from store aisles to algorithms.

In the integrated new world of omnichannel marketing, vendors are finding they need to pay to ensure their goods are instantly seen by Walmart’s huge audience as the world’s largest retailer.

But it’s a price well worth paying, according to professionals who help suppliers navigate the new artificial intelligence-driven version of “Vendorville,” the nickname Bentonville accrued over the decades as a magnet for companies seeking a foot in the door of Walmart’s global headquarters.

“Digital advertising for suppliers on Walmart.com has become a critical factor for them in maintaining and growing sales, and Walmart Connect has great tools,” said Steven Bertram, the new president of 8th & Walton, a Bentonville company that’s been helping suppliers work with Walmart for 20 years.

“Everyone has equal opportunity to compete for purchases online, whereas that’s not necessarily the same in the store,” Bertram said in a telephone interview.

“The challenge is that online, there’s only a few items to be seen at a time vs. everything that’s in front of you at the store,” he said. “But on Walmart.com and the Walmart app you can utilize advertising tools to get your items at the top, and now everyone has an ability to compete. You have to pay for it, of course, but it levels the playing field … for those who understand how to use the tools.”

Vendors serious about competing need to allot a budget to pay for this advertising presence, Bertram said, calling it virtually unavoidable when 30% to 40% of a Walmart grocery suppliers’ volume now resides online, where visibility boils down to search rankings and paid placement.

Chase Binnie, a search optimization expert and CEO of RetailWire in Bentonville, said paying to take advantage of (retail media) has “almost become the table stakes for suppliers who want to be seen and do a lot of sales through Walmart as a channel, as a retailer.

“It’s rare to think I’m going to have my products sold by that retailer, but I’m not going to have any budget to run promotions,” Binnie said in an interview.

Walmart has turned a sophisticated and integrated omnichannel marketing strategy into a major moneymaker, Binnie said, with advertising margins many times higher than product sales.

The retail margin is relatively minuscule on a can of beans or a gallon of milk, making it “harder for Walmart to make money on that,” Binnie said. “But their margin on retail media or the ad placements is a 70% to 80% margin.”

Ad revenue in 2025 totaled $6.4 billion, Walmart reported in its annual earnings announcement in February. That reflected a 41% increase in domestic business for Walmart Connect, the company’s proprietary retail media network.

In a May 2026 earnings call, new Walmart CEO John Furner put it this way: “For the quarter, our advertising business grew more than 30% for each segment, including 36% for Walmart U.S. Membership fee revenue grew 17% … . Together these profit streams represented approximately one-third of operating income.”

Big Business

Overall quarterly revenue reported in May for the first quarter of fiscal 2027 was up 7.4% year-over-year to nearly $178 billion, beating Wall Street forecasts, and global e-commerce sales grew by 26%. Global advertising revenue through Walmart Connect and other systems soared 37%.

Walmart’s integrated digital marketplace and unified app drove the surge, industry experts say. The Walmart app works as an in-store assistant, directing shoppers to what they want, scanning barcodes and providing a seamless checkout.

Walmart Marketplace allows third-party sellers to list merchandise on Walmart.com, and Walmart Fulfillment Services lets them store and ship through the retail giant’s logistics system. The company also uses proprietary contextual and agentic AI to facilitate conversational shopping. For instance, a customer may give ChatGPT a shopping list, and AI systems could route the order to Walmart.

Allisha Watkins, founder and CEO of Paradox, a retail marketing agency headquartered in Rogers, said the Vendorville world has transformed since 2016. “Ten years ago, success was primarily negotiated at the (store) shelf,” she said via email. “Today, it’s negotiated across an entire ecosystem. Walmart expects suppliers to think beyond assortment and pricing, to understand digital shelf optimization, retail media, search, fulfillment, customer lifetime value, and omnichannel measurement.”

Walmart has expanded data tools like Scintilla and Connect. Scintill offers consumer and supply chain intelligence; Connect runs targeted media campaigns. (Photo provided)Does this new environment mean more costs for vendors? “It can,” Watkins said, “but I’d frame it as an investment rather than simply a cost. Brands are investing in retail media, richer content, data analytics and omnichannel capabilities that didn’t exist a decade ago. The flip side is that suppliers now have better data and better measurement than ever before.”

For decades, northwest Arkansas has drawn a massive cluster of corporate suppliers, but the need for a physical presence to do business may also be shifting.

“It’s like a legend in Bentonville that every vendor has to have an office,” said Binnie, the RetailWire CEO. “It’s like a pilgrimage.” But no local office is required in e-commerce. “Today, brands start their journey” by listing on Walmart Marketplace, a virtual bazaar similar to Amazon. “You set up a profile, upload your products and start selling,” Binnie said.

A cost is involved, but Watkins said brands that treat that investment strategically, “not just as another budget line,” typically see stronger returns. “Walmart has also expanded tools like Scintilla and Connect to help suppliers use omnichannel data more effectively,” she said.

Scintilla and Connect are the two halves of Walmart’s data-driven flywheel, the company says. Scintilla provides consumer and supply chain intelligence; Connect runs targeted media campaigns.

Originally separate platforms, the two came together after Walmart realized how powerful they could work in tandem. Brands use them to glean real-time retail insights on product inventory, shelf availability and organic store sales, Walmart’s website says, and then generate automated and optimized digital ad spends.

Deanah Baker, who spent 32 years with Walmart before retiring in 2022 as senior vice president/general merchandise manager-omni apparel merchandising, told Arkansas Business that suppliers have to master both channels. That means “testing, studying the results and refining based on what they see,” said Baker, who hosts a podcast on the Doing Business in Bentonville multimedia platform. “The best ones also bring those findings back to their Walmart partners to figure out how the channels can work together to build the business for both sides.”

Baker said some apparel suppliers built successful partnerships with Walmart during her tenure there without a physical presence in northwest Arkansas. “Certain steps in the development process still require being face to face — that hasn’t changed. But digital tools now let everyone stay connected and on top of the business without needing to be physically present all the time.”

Watkins, of the Paradox agency, said today’s technology makes it possible to remotely manage day-to-day operations with Walmart. But “the biggest strategic conversations, including joint business planning, innovation discussions, line reviews, problem-solving and trust-building, are still significantly stronger face to face,” she said.

“Being in Bentonville isn’t about proximity anymore. It’s about partnership.”

Sparky the Salesman

Furner, the CEO, described today’s Walmart in the May 21 earnings call as a company leveraging its vast presence and technological investments to continually reinvent itself.

Walmart uses its 5,200 stores and Sam’s Club locations in the U.S. as fulfillment hubs for online orders. Attached micro-fulfillment facilities use robotics to pack orders, and the company has curbside pickup with systems that alert delivery teams the minute a customer pulls in.

“We saw strong growth in e-commerce, including advertising and Marketplace,” Furner said. “Transaction growth in the U.S. was the strongest we’ve seen in six quarters, so I feel great about the way we’re executing our strategy.”

That includes an “enterprise approach to platforms,” Furner said, “scaling tech-powered businesses like advertising, Marketplace and Fulfillment Services and membership alongside our core retail operations to drive growth at a lower marginal cost.”

Walmart is also becoming “AI native,” he said, generating more personal service by responding to customer prompts.

“Sparky, our AI shopping agent, is making this possible,” Furner continued. “Weekly active users are up over 100% just in the last quarter, and our investments in AI have increased Sparky intelligence and response quality by 40% this year. … You can now use Sparky in stores and automatically reorder items you have on repeat. Sparky even speaks Spanish these days. And as we’ve mentioned, customers using Sparky have an average order value that’s about 35% higher than non-Sparky customers.”

Using the Tools

Bertram, who took over as president of 8th & Walton in June, said vendors are quickly learning to take advantage of Walmart’s tech tools.

“It’s very important that (items) are categorized correctly, because Walmart’s algorithms are going to allow or disallow an item to be found based on what category it’s in, and based around those keywords,” he said.

Misclassification or poor advertising copy hinders discoverability before a single ad dollar is spent. “Understand what people are putting into search engines and AI prompts … then use your copy and content to target those words.”

8th & Walton is “meeting brands more at the digital shelf,” Bertram said, helping them create content and manage digital ads “so that they can claim their rightful place in the category.”

Binnie argues that online shopping is shifting from keyword searches to assistant-guided requests that mimic interactions with an old-style sales associate. Instead of typing “mountain bike,” a shopper now tells an AI program, “I’m coming to Bentonville, I’m a beginner, I’ve ridden a few times, and I have this budget,” Binnie said. The assistant interprets context and recommends a short list of products.

To convert those interactions into sales, vendors must rewrite product pages beyond specs and stock-keeping unit (SKU) data to include who the product is for, how and where it’s used, and scenario-based pitches like “great for beginners” or “perfect for light casual hikes,” Binnie said.

Watkins believes the public’s biggest misconception about omnichannel marketing is that people think it’s about selling in more places. It isn’t, she said. “It’s about creating one seamless experience for the customer, regardless of where they choose to shop. The companies that win won’t be the ones with the most channels; they’ll be the ones with the fewest disconnects.”