Skai’s Q&A with Walmart’s Dionne Resnik to Discuss Its New Advertising Partners Program

Watch the Full Q&A with Walmart’s Dionne Resnik

On Friday, the Walmart Media Group (WMG) announced that it will be expanding its Sponsored Search offering through the Walmart Advertising Partners program with Skai as one of the launch partners.

Each week, more than 275 million shoppers across 11,000+ Walmart stores in 27 countries. With 90% of retail transactions happen in the store, advertising platforms that only or mostly use online data miss 90% of shopper insights to help build that impactful campaign. That’s a huge opportunity missed to reach the right shopper and get them over the finish line. Walmart Media Group brings the most comprehensive data integrated in-store and online shopping insights to help accelerate advertiser campaign success.

Q&A with Walmart’s Dionne Resnik

Skai’s GM for Ecommerce, Nich Weinheimer spoke with Dionne Resnik, Senior Manager, Retail Enablement at Walmart Media Group, to delve deeper into what the partnership means for advertisers.

The following is a partial transcript of the LinkedIn Live Q&A. Watch the full interview here. 

Skai: It’s been an exciting few days since the announcement came out. Can you please recap what was announced in case anyone missed it?

Resnik: We understand that advertisers have different needs and some may prefer to buy ad space through third-party ad tech platforms to help streamline their media buying which is why we started looking at the best way to expand our model and give brands more control and options. The Walmart Advertising Partners Program will help provide advertisers with the right partners and solutions to help scale, automate, and optimize with us.

Skai: Why did Walmart choose to develop its own API and self-service advertising program?

Resnik: We understand that brands today are looking for more increased automation & scale and more control & access to their campaigns in real-time. We knew this was especially the case with our Sponsored Search-focused marketers. With this opportunity in mind, we’ve been investing in the past year and a half in third-party buying tools and APIs for marketers and agencies to do more on their own and tap into the full power of Walmart’s scaled shopping audience.

This program allows us to expand our market footprint and to reach a wider range of advertisers while giving marketers increased access and visibility with Walmart’s diverse and sizeable audience of shoppers.

Skai: What sorts of things are advertisers excited about with regards to this new partner program?

Resnik: Our advertisers have been asking for this for a really long time. This gives them an opportunity to consolidate their media buying and optimization while putting reporting on the platform. Working with an API partner like Skai provides greater transparency and control to these advertisers while leveraging the partner network to scale revenue and accelerate growth. We’re excited for brands to see the value of these partnerships come to life.

Skai: Who is the typical Walmart consumer? How will this initiative help the consumer?

Resnik: Each week, 160 million American shoppers online and in-store find everyday essentials with our convenient and innovative platforms. We are the largest American grocer which keeps us at the forefront, but we’re not just grocery. We have 150,000+ SKUs in the store and 75 million+ SKUs online. When shoppers want to discover new products, they come to Walmart. Through this partnership, we know our valued shopper will get a deeper breadth of product options to enhance the customer experience. That’s always a priority for Walmart.

Skai: What are the benefits of advertising on Walmart?

Resnik: Walmart is the number one retailer with the largest global store footprint and the Walmart Media Group has access to Walmart’s scaled shopping data that no one else can match. Since it’s made up of both in-store and online transaction data & insights, we address a big gap in the advertising market. Only Walmart Media Group can deliver on the 90% missing insights from retail moments happening in-store and leverage those insights for ad delivery through multiple channels.

We have machine learning and data integration to reach the right shopper at the right moments in the right formats—and we do this with precision. Any brand that wants to reach shoppers with accountable, data-backed, targeted scale and reach should consider partnering with us. We serve 95% of American shoppers which gives us insight into every demographic and every income level. We believe that brands will see the value of shifting their budgets to Walmart Media Group.

Skai: Is this intended to be a more direct response or full-stack advertising?

Resnik: Sponsored Products are a combination of both direct response and brand awareness. Each and every day, more vendors enter into the Walmart ecosystem and Walmart Media Group helps brands get discovered by more shoppers that will help to boost sales.

But additionally, Sponsored Products help to defend your brand. Your brand or product line might not be well-known so getting your ads in front of shoppers can help critical brand awareness. Every brand can now compete with larger brands to reach shoppers with prominent, high traffic ad placements in the search results, product detail pages, and the buy box. Advertisers only pay when a shopper clicks their ads to ensure that campaigns are based on real interaction.

Skai: We are extremely excited to be named as a launch partner. Where do partnerships fit into the overall strategy?

We are very excited to be partnering with you as well. Our partners are very important to us and have deep experience in working with one or more of the advertising segments and a proven history of excellent advisory service, account support, and a shared roadmap vision of what makes Walmart special. Skai is a great representation of that.

Through these key partnerships, we will grow our search offerings to meet the needs of our advertisers including the most advanced search advertisers. It’s an exciting time and we are kicking off 2020 with some exciting partners.

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