Skai Expands Display and CTV Support in Commerce Media with Walmart DSP

More than half of retail media advertisers are shifting display budgets away from traditional programmatic and into retail media DSPs. According to Skai and Stratably’s 2026 State of Retail Media report, 52% have already reallocated spend to retailer DSP platforms. Two reasons are driving this shift: closed-loop attribution that connects ad exposure directly to sales, and access to rich retailer audience data built on actual purchase behavior. Both beat anything open web DSPs can deliver.

The numbers back up the urgency: US programmatic ad spending will top $200 billion in 2026. Retail media is claiming a bigger slice of that pie every year, with its share of programmatic ad spending projected to hit 11.7% this year. And programmatic retail media network (RMN) display ad spending is growing 23.6% YoY, outpacing even programmatic social (15.3% YoY). Brands aren’t just testing these platforms anymore. They’re restructuring budgets around them.

But here’s the problem emerging as this shift accelerates, and what Skai’s new Walmart DSP support is designed to solve: Most brands are running multiple retailer and DSP programs in completely different disconnected systems. While Walmart itself offers a consolidated view across Walmart Connect ad types, advertisers are still managing additional DSPs and retail media platforms elsewhere.

Skai connects Walmart DSP with other DSPs and retailers, bringing these programs together so advertisers can see performance and compare results, enabling them to consider actions across their programs instead of in silos. Advertisers solved the measurement problem by moving into retail media DSPs, but they’ve inherited a fragmentation problem that’s just as damaging.

What actually changes when you see the full picture

Platform consolidation has become the top priority for retail media leaders, and for good reason. Walmart DSP gives advertisers access to premium CTV inventory, display placements across the open web, and sophisticated audience targeting powered by Walmart’s first-party data from the ~150 million U.S. customers it serves in stores and online each week. When Walmart DSP performance is viewed alongside Walmart onsite display and search, other DSPs, and other retail media networks in one unified view, the entire strategic equation shifts. That’s exactly what Skai now enables: bringing multiple DSP programs into a single view for reporting, analysis, and in-platform bid and budget edits.

The operational wins are immediate: no manual data exports to compare performance across platforms; no waiting to understand which DSP delivers better efficiency for your objectives; and bid and budget changes can happen without leaving Skai. Even greater is the strategic advantage: With unified visibility, advertisers can finally answer questions that matter: Which DSP audience delivers better ROAS for my category? How should I allocate my upper-funnel budget across multiple retail media DSPs? Where do my audience strategies perform best across different retailer ecosystems? Which DSP placements drive the most efficient conversion paths?

This shifts teams from execution mode to orchestration mode. Instead of setting budgets at the beginning of a quarter and hoping for the best, advertisers can shift spend dynamically based on comparative performance. If CTV campaigns are delivering stronger efficiency for a particular audience, you can reallocate immediately. If certain audience segments perform better on one platform versus another, you can see those signals and measure and adjust accordingly.

The brands winning in retail media right now aren’t just better at execution. They’re better at orchestration. They’re treating their DSP portfolio as an integrated ecosystem where every dollar gets allocated based on cross-platform performance signals. That’s only possible when multiple DSPs share a unified data and reporting layer.

Where Walmart DSP fits in your total retail media mix

According to the State of Retail Media, brands already work with an average of 6 retail media networks at any given time, and that figure is expected to increase to 8 by the end of 2026. Each retailer operates differently and each retailer’s DSP has its own interface and reporting structure.

Overseeing all of that is not sustainable for any team. Programmatic retail media’s rapid rise (now the fastest-growing segment within programmatic advertising) is being driven partly by advertisers demanding that this complexity gets solved — not by adding more seats and more dashboards, but by giving their teams, and increasingly their AI agents, a single place to work from.

Understanding Walmart DSP performance in isolation is useful. Understanding how it performs alongside other retail media and DSP investments provides strategic intelligence if you can get to that understanding at the speed the market moves.

That’s the premise behind Skai Data Hub: one standardized layer where Walmart DSP, retail, search, and social data come together. On top of it, Celeste — Skai’s agentic AI — operates directly on the unified data across planning, optimization, and analysis. And teams standardized on their own AI stack can connect via MCP and point their own agents at the same foundation.

That’s what unlocks real portfolio-level answers. Which DSP delivers the best ROAS for upper-funnel CTV? Where should display budgets be concentrated? How do audience strategies transfer across retail media and DSP environments? Which platforms deliver the best efficiency for specific product categories or seasonal campaigns? Instead of stitching those answers together from six separate reporting interfaces, advertisers (or their agents) can ask them of a single, AI-native layer.

The shift happening in retail media isn’t just about adding more channels. It’s about building integrated strategies that treat retail media DSPs as a unified discipline — powered by a unified data foundation and the agents built to operate on it. Advertisers who crack this integration challenge first will have a decisive advantage as retail media continues scaling toward $100 billion in total ad spend by 2026.

The market is demanding unified systems

The retail media industry is entering a new phase of maturity. According to recent industry analysis, 2026 is shaping up to be “the year retail media grows up,” with demands for professionalization, standardized measurement, and AI-driven optimization replacing experimental, fragmented approaches.

Platform consolidation is a direct response to this shift. This dynamic isn’t unique to Walmart. As we explored in our post Why Programmatic Marketers Should Bet Big on Retail Media, nearly 60% of retail media leaders in Skai’s 2025 State of Retail Media survey ranked platform consolidation as their top priority. The operational strain of managing fragmented systems across multiple retailers is pushing the entire industry toward unified solutions.

Advertisers are tired of managing campaigns across a dozen disconnected interfaces. They’re demanding unified workflows that let them move faster, optimize smarter, and prove incrementality with confidence.Walmart Connect keeps outpacing the retail media market.Ad sales grew 41% year over year in Walmart Connect US’ Q4 (November 2025 through January 2026), capping a year that pushed Walmart’s global ad business to $6.4B (up 46% YoY) and is expanding rapidly across display and CTV following the Vizio integration. As Walmart DSP continues to scale, advertisers need unified ways to measure and adjust these investments alongside the rest of their commerce media portfolio.

Conclusion: Built for what’s next in retail media

The question isn’t whether to connect Walmart DSP to the rest of your retail media program. It’s how quickly you can make that transition. That’s why Skai now supports Walmart DSP, giving advertisers a unified platform for cross-retailer reporting, portfolio-level adjustments, and smarter investment decisions across their full-funnel retail media program.

For advertisers managing multiple DSPs, that integration means comparative performance visibility across platforms. It means having the reporting infrastructure to shift budgets confidently based on which DSP drives better efficiency for specific objectives. And it means evaluating and acting on Walmart DSP performance within the broader context of a multi-retailer, multi-DSP retail media portfolio.

The market is moving toward consolidation, automation, and AI-powered optimization. The fragmented approaches that worked when retail media was smaller won’t scale as the channel grows toward $100 billion and beyond. The winning strategies will be those built on unified data, cross-DSP visibility, and the ability to orchestrate full-funnel programs with speed and precision.

Disconnected systems are a liability beyond their inefficiency. As 52% of advertisers reallocate display budgets into retail media DSPs, the brands that can connect these programs and make coordinated investment decisions across platforms will capture disproportionate advantage.

Skai’s Retail Media solution enables marketers to plan, activate, and measure campaigns across 200+ retailers as part of a broader commerce media strategy. AI-powered pacing, product intelligence, and keyword tools help teams meet shoppers across the journey and tie spend to sales with confidence.

Ready to see how unified DSP reporting and cross-platform decision-making works in practice? Schedule a quick demo.