Walmart Connect is Walmart's retail media platform, and for most sellers it starts โ€” and mostly stays โ€” at Sponsored Products. But the ecosystem also includes brand-level tools like Search Brand Amplifier that aren't relevant until you've got the basics running. Here's a practical starting point for where your first ad dollars should go.

What Walmart Connect Is

Walmart Connect is the umbrella for Walmart's advertising products, covering on-site search and browse placements, off-site display, and brand-focused formats. Access to some formats depends on account type and category โ€” Sponsored Products is the most broadly available and the natural starting point for most third-party sellers.

Sponsored Products: The Entry Point

Sponsored Products places your listing in search results and on relevant product pages, on a cost-per-click, auction-based model similar in concept to sponsored ads on other marketplaces. It's available at the individual item level, doesn't require a separate creative asset beyond your existing listing content, and is where nearly every Walmart advertiser starts.

Campaign Types: Automatic vs Manual

Automatic campaigns let Walmart's system match your ad to relevant search terms without you specifying keywords โ€” useful early on for discovering which terms actually drive clicks and conversions on your listing. Manual campaigns let you target specific keywords and, depending on the tools available, exclude ones that aren't converting, giving more control once you have data from an automatic campaign to work from.

A common approach: run an automatic campaign first to gather search-term performance data, then build manual campaigns around the terms that are actually converting, while using negative keywords to cut spend on irrelevant matches the automatic campaign surfaced.

Search Brand Amplifier

Search Brand Amplifier is a brand-level placement โ€” a banner-style ad unit that appears above search results, showcasing your brand alongside a curated set of your products. It typically requires brand registration or ownership and a higher spend commitment than a single Sponsored Products campaign, making it better suited to sellers with a recognizable brand and a multi-product catalog than to a single-SKU seller just getting started.

Budgeting Your First Campaigns

  • Start with a modest daily budget on Sponsored Products for your best-selling or highest-margin SKUs, not your entire catalog at once
  • Give automatic campaigns enough runway โ€” days, not hours โ€” to accumulate meaningful click and conversion data before judging performance
  • Reserve Search Brand Amplifier and larger brand-level spend for once Sponsored Products is generating a return you understand

Measuring What's Working

Track return on ad spend at the campaign and search-term level, not just overall โ€” a campaign can look profitable in aggregate while a chunk of its spend goes to terms that never convert. Regularly pruning non-converting search terms out of manual campaigns, and adding them as negatives, tends to do more for profitability than increasing bids across the board.