2021 Publisher Holiday Trends: Walmart

Welcome, Marketers! Every year around this time, each of our publisher partners provides internal research with helpful data & tips that can shed some light on some of the forces and factors that might come into play during the all-important fourth quarter. This post is part of a Skai 2021 holidays series that shares these publisher insights to help you make any last-minute adjustments to your holiday shopping season advertising plans. Click the links within the content below to visit the publisher sources to get even more information.

Each week, more than 275 million people shop across 11,000+ Walmart stores in 27 countries. Walmart Connect brings the most comprehensive data integrated with in-store and online shopping insights to help accelerate advertiser campaign success.

Recently, Walmart Connect released its holiday tips, tricks, and stats in the article, Walmart Holiday Playbook: Shining a light on opportunities in the 2021 season. The information contained in this Skai blog post is taken directly from that article. Please read that article and more from Walmart Connect’s Insights page for more in-depth details.

How are people planning to celebrate the holidays this year?

Last year’s holiday season was under the thumb of the pandemic. While the pandemic isn’t totally over yet, consumers seem to be incredibly hopeful about the holidays this year. Walmart shoppers are 2X+ more likely to celebrate with family and friends this year than last year.

Here’s how survey responders answered certain questions about how they’re celebrating 2021 versus 2020:

• With both friends and family, or extended family
  • 2020: 22%
  • 2021: 46%
• With an adjusted, smaller than usual gathering without masks
  • 2020: 33%
  • 2021: 27%
• With an adjusted, smaller than usual gathering with masks or outside
  • 2020: 17%
  • 2021: 10%
• With just a virtual celebration
  • 2020: 14%
  • 2021: 0%

What you need to know about Walmart customers for the holidays

• 31% get their holiday inspiration from in-store displays and decorations
• 83% prefer deals/sales spread out over the course of the season
• 26% plan on using pickup and delivery more this year

Even Santa might choose Walmart for toys

Toys are a huge category for Walmart shoppers. It is the most-searched category during the Holidays. 54% of toy search activity was on the App and 36% of the top 100 searched Toy keywords were non-branded. This means that consumers are browsing as they shop and are most likely open to be influenced by advertisements.

Additionally, each week during the 2020 holidays season, on average, 27M toys were bought at Walmart across channels including 4.9M+ toy vehicles, 4.7M+ dolls, 2.8M+ games & puzzles, and 1.1M construction toys.

Video games sales spiked during the pandemic and continue to be hot

With many people working from home, there was more time to play video games. +45% more Walmart Video Game buyers say they’re shopping for someone else during the holidays compared to the rest of the year, and 41% of grandparents shopping for the holiday season shop at Walmart.

During last year’s holiday season, Walmart’s weekly average sales in the video game category included:

• 2.8M+ video grames
• 1.1M+ video game software items
• 670k+ video game accessories
• 600k+ video game digital cards
• 250k+ video game interactive items
• 215k+ video game hardware items

Holiday beauty shopping at Walmart

83% of Walmart customers are extremely likely to celebrate the holidays this year. And because more people are going to be celebrating in person than last year, they are going to invest in beauty products to look their best. 

Walmart beauty shoppers are a diverse group across different ages including 25% age 25-39, 25%+ age 40-54, and 25% age 55-75. Not only that, but last holidays season, nearly 1 in 3 beauty shoppers were male.

Check out more of these great stats on the Walmart Connected Insights page.

Skai Retail Media solutions can be the foundation for your holiday advertising success

Gain access to prime cross-retailer ad inventory from Walmart Connect and other retailers to meet your customers where they are.

• Full cross-retailer support all in one platform — one login, one interface
• Continuously investing in our platform to expand our retail media network 
• Robust cross-channel campaign attribution support across Retail Media, Search & Social

For more information, visit the Skai Retail Media solutions page.

You can also reach out to schedule a quick demo to see all of these great features in action

Request a Demo of Skai