How Direct Agents Turned Walmart Into a Real Growth Channel

In early 2026, a leading electronics accessories brand faced a shifting retail landscape. Margins on core retailers were tightening, and traditional channels were becoming less reliable for growth. At the same time, Walmart was accelerating. More shoppers were engaging there, and the platform was maturing into a viable performance channel.

Direct Agents saw this as a clear opportunity. They worked to move early, invest aggressively, and establish share before the space became saturated.

Direct Agents identified Walmart not just as an incremental upside, but as a channel that could drive sustained, efficient growth if approached with the right strategy. By prioritizing the highest-performing opportunities and reallocating budget as competition increased, the team set an ambitious goal to grow revenue without losing efficiency.

But execution in the ad console was still manual. That made it hard to scale with any real precision or speed. Visibility into what was actually driving performance was limited, reporting lacked the granularity to make confident calls, and optimizations tended to happen after the fact rather than ahead of it. Budget inefficiencies were often invisible until it was too late to fix them.

Direct Agents turned to Skai to unlock greater control With Skai, they gained the visibility needed to validate the opportunity, identify what was driving returns, and invest with confidence.

First, Direct Agents needed to validate that Walmart could deliver the sustainable, efficient growth the brand wanted. They led a strategic shift through intentional steps that could scale as performance followed. By the end of 2025, the brand grew Walmart sponsored search revenue by ↑ 13.6% YoY while holding spend nearly flat- a clear indicator of efficiency gains across the portfolio on the channel. In 2026, they were ready to scale investment and returns with by deeper data visibility, more precise targeting optimization, and workflow automations that go well beyond what is available natively.

Reframe Walmart as a priority channel
Instead of treating Walmart as incremental to other retail media channels, Direct Agents and the brand aligned on a more aggressive investment stance. The focus shifted to capturing share of search early and building a lasting presence before competition could gain ground on the platform. From here, they tackled the manual bottleneck with automated keyword-level controls to pause inefficiencies, manage pacing, and respond to changes in real time

Allocate budget based on what actually drives performance
Rather than scaling broadly, Direct Agents focused on precision. Search term analysis to identify and scale high-intent queries, shifting budget toward what drives conversion and away from wasted spend. By identifying which targeting strategies and queries delivered the strongest returns, they concentrated spend where it would have the greatest impact.

Build a system for scaling efficiently
Direct Agents operationalized a more proactive approach, continuously identifying underperforming areas, reallocating budget, and doubling down on what worked. Skai’s features gave them ad group-level visibility to identify top-performing strategies and concentrate spend where returns are strongest

By leading with sustained investment and disciplined targeting, Direct Agents turned Walmart into a core growth channel for the brand:

• 94% YoY increase in revenue
• 77% YoY increase in conversions
• 157% increase in spend
• 5.09x ROAS maintained at scale

Even as costs rose with increased competition, Direct Agents protected efficiency by continuously reallocating budget toward the highest-performing opportunities.

By combining strategic channel prioritization with data-driven execution, Direct Agents helped the brand transform Walmart from an emerging opportunity into a predictable, scalable revenue driver. With Skai, that strategy became actionable, turning fragmented data into clear decisions on where to invest next.

Direct Agents is a full-service growth marketing consultancy fueled by a future-focused mindset. As an independent and certified Minority-Owned Business, our team of professionals across NY, LA and Austin brings unique insights and solutions to every project. We specialize in strategic innovation and an AI-integrated approach, consistently providing our clients with a competitive edge in an ever-evolving marketing landscape.

To learn more about our services, visit www.directagents.com.