Walmart to launch its own DSP with The Trade Desk this fall

Multinational retail giant Walmart announced on Wednesday that it’s set to launch its own demand-side platform to ‘’pioneer a new frontier in digital advertising and give advertisers an open, transparent and objective platform while upholding privacy standards.’’

The company has partnered with Canadian ad-tech firm The Trade Desk to build Walmart DSP which will be available for select advertisers this October during the holiday shopping season. 

Rich Lehrfeld, the Senior Vice President of Walmart Connect, said: ‘Unlike other DSP products in the market, our standalone platform combines the best-in-class technology and performance of The Trade Desk with the robust scale of Walmart’s unparalleled first party omnichannel data, allowing advertisers to be more effective with their overall media spend.’’

The platform is powered by Walmart’s vast shopping data archive generated from its online, mobile app and offline shoppers. The retail giant currently has 150 million weekly customers using its website, app and 4,700 physical stores.  

‘’While the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated Walmart eCommerce sales growth, there has also been a measurable increase in Walmart store traffic over the past quarter,’’ said Lehrfeld. ‘’By connecting and measuring both online and in-store performance, the Walmart DSP can offer targeting, reporting and omnichannel insights down to a granular level.’’

Walmart DSP customers will also have full access to The Trade Desk inventory across multiple channels including display, streaming video, mobile, audio and connected TV. 

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Lehrfeld added that the platform will not be a ‘walled garden‘ like most other DSP platforms in the industry, including those of Google and Facebook.

“The goal is to make it actually an open platform where people can access inventory off the web in a multitude of different [formats].’’ Lehrfeld told Adweek. ‘’So it’s actually trying to make it a much more open platform than anything out there.”