For most of the last decade, the retail media budget conversation was simple: put 80–90% on Amazon, throw the rest at experiments. That calculus is cracking in 2026. Walmart Connect — Walmart’s advertising platform rebranded and relaunched with DSP capabilities in late 2024 — has posted two consecutive quarters of 30%-plus ad revenue growth, according to Walmart’s Q1 2026 earnings call. Amazon’s retail media arm still generated an estimated $58.4 billion in 2025, per eMarketer’s February 2026 U.S. Retail Media Forecast. But the gap is narrowing faster than most sellers expected, and the operational implications for brand-side budget holders are real.
What’s Actually Driving Walmart Connect’s Growth in 2026?
Walmart Connect’s momentum isn’t purely organic. The platform has benefited from three structural tailwinds: the explosion of Walmart+ membership (now reported at 38 million subscribers as of March 2026), Walmart’s aggressive push to onboard third-party marketplace sellers post-2023, and a deliberate underpricing strategy on Sponsored Products CPCs relative to Amazon. Average CPCs on Walmart Connect Sponsored Products are running roughly $0.55–$0.80 across high-volume categories like home goods, pet supplies, and personal care, according to data aggregated by Perpetua’s Q1 2026 Retail Media Benchmarks report. Amazon Sponsored Products in the same categories are averaging $1.40–$2.10, per the same report.
“Walmart Connect right now feels like Amazon Ads did in 2018 — the inventory is cheap, the targeting is improving, and most brands are still sleeping on it. We moved 15% of our Amazon ad budget there in Q4 2025 and saw a blended ROAS improvement of 2.1x on that shifted spend.” — Carly Donovan, Head of Retail Media, Olipop’s agency partner Structured Agency
The caveat: Walmart Connect’s audience is smaller, and its search intent density — the volume of purchase-ready queries — still trails Amazon meaningfully. Walmart.com receives an estimated 500 million monthly visits versus Amazon’s 2.4 billion, per Similarweb’s May 2026 data. For sellers with thin margins and high velocity requirements, that gap still matters enormously.
How Do the Ad Products Actually Compare?
Both platforms now offer Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands (called Sponsored Brands on Amazon, Brand Amplifier on Walmart), and DSP-level programmatic display. But the depth of tooling diverges significantly.
Amazon’s advertising console is more mature, with richer keyword-level reporting, product-level attribution windows up to 14 days, and deep integration with Brand Analytics, including Share of Voice data. Third-party tools like Helium 10 Adtomic, Perpetua, and Teikametrics have years of Amazon bid optimization models built on top of this data infrastructure. Walmart Connect’s API, while improved in 2025, still lags on impression-share reporting and keyword-level bid granularity. Perpetua added Walmart Connect bid automation in Q3 2025, but agency buyers report the models need 6–8 weeks of data before they optimize meaningfully.
- Amazon Ads: 14-day attribution, new-to-brand metrics, full DSP with AMC (Amazon Marketing Cloud) for SQL-level audience analysis
- Walmart Connect: 30-day attribution window (a recent change favoring Walmart), Walmart Luminate data integration for in-store + online basket analysis, improving but still limited third-party tool support
- Amazon Ads: Video ads in search results (Sponsored Brands Video) with high CTR benchmarks in supplements and beauty
- Walmart Connect: In-store screen placements across 4,700+ physical locations — a genuinely differentiated offline touchpoint Amazon cannot replicate
What Do the ROAS Numbers Actually Look Like by Category?
The honest answer is: it depends heavily on category, competition density, and whether you’re an established or emerging brand. Based on aggregated benchmarks from Perpetua’s Q1 2026 report and Tinuiti’s Spring 2026 Retail Media Snapshot, here’s how the platforms compare across common seller categories.
| Category | Amazon Avg. CPC | Amazon Avg. ROAS | Walmart Connect Avg. CPC | Walmart Connect Avg. ROAS | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Home & Kitchen | $1.52 | 4.1x | $0.63 | 3.6x | Amazon (volume); Walmart (margin) |
| Pet Supplies | $1.38 | 5.2x | $0.58 | 4.8x | Split — Walmart closing fast |
| Beauty & Personal Care | $2.05 | 3.8x | $0.72 | 2.9x | Amazon (intent quality) |
| Grocery & Consumables | $0.98 | 6.1x | $0.54 | 5.4x | Walmart (in-store lift data edge) |
| Electronics & Accessories | $1.85 | 3.2x | $0.68 | 2.4x | Amazon (search density) |
| Toys & Games | $1.21 | 4.7x | $0.61 | 4.1x | Amazon Q4; Walmart off-peak |
The pattern that emerges: Amazon wins on raw ROAS in high-intent, high-competition categories where search volume justifies elevated CPCs. Walmart Connect wins on efficiency metrics — cost per acquisition, profit-adjusted ROAS — in categories where its grocery and general merchandise audience over-indexes, and where physical store data through Walmart Luminate provides attribution visibility that Amazon cannot offer.
How Are Sophisticated Sellers Actually Splitting Their Budgets?
The brands running meaningful Walmart Connect spend in 2026 are not abandoning Amazon — they’re building a second engine. The most common architecture we’re seeing from agency contacts: a 70/20/10 split (Amazon/Walmart/other retail media like Instacart or Target’s Roundel) for brands doing $5M–$50M in annual marketplace revenue.
“Our clients who are winning on Walmart Connect aren’t treating it like a discount Amazon. They’re using Luminate data to understand basket behavior, then feeding that back into their Amazon creative strategy. The two platforms are informing each other.” — Marcus Tran, VP of Retail Media, Tinuiti
Smaller sellers — those under $1M in annual Amazon revenue — are largely staying put on Amazon for now. The minimum meaningful Walmart Connect Sponsored Products budget to generate statistically actionable data is roughly $3,000–$5,000/month per category, according to several agency media buyers we spoke with. Below that, the impression volume is too thin to optimize.
- Brands in grocery, pet, and household consumables: strongest immediate case for Walmart Connect investment
- Brands in beauty, electronics, and premium apparel: Amazon remains dominant; Walmart Connect as a brand awareness play only
- Brands with physical retail distribution at Walmart stores: Walmart Connect’s in-store screens and Luminate integration create a closed-loop attribution advantage no other platform can match
- Pure-play DTC brands with no Walmart.com presence: onboarding friction and catalog setup requirements make Walmart Connect a Q3 2026 or later project for most
What Are the Operational Risks on Each Platform?
Amazon’s risks are well-documented. Sponsored Products CPCs have hit an 18-month high across several categories as of May 2026, driven by increased brand-side advertiser competition and Amazon’s own first-party product placements consuming top-of-search real estate. Amazon Marketing Cloud is powerful but requires SQL fluency or a vendor like Perpetua or Pacvue to extract usable insights — a meaningful cost layer for mid-market brands.
Walmart Connect’s risks are less discussed but equally real. The platform’s self-serve console still suffers from reporting latency — some sellers report 48–72 hour delays in campaign performance data, making intra-day bid management impossible without third-party tooling. Walmart’s marketplace seller policies have also tightened in 2026, with new content compliance requirements that can trigger ad suspension if product listings fall below Walmart’s Item Quality Score threshold. Several brands we spoke with reported ad campaigns being paused automatically when listing scores dropped — a workflow issue Amazon sellers don’t face in the same way.
“The listing-to-ad dependency on Walmart is a real operational headache. We had a seasonal campaign go dark for four days because a spec error on a variant dropped our Item Quality Score. On Amazon, your ads keep running even if your listing has issues. Walmart’s system is more fragile right now.” — Jessica Park, Director of Marketplace Strategy, Pattern
What’s the Verdict for 2026 Budget Planning?
Amazon Ads remains the default primary investment for the overwhelming majority of marketplace sellers in 2026 — the audience depth, attribution tooling, and search intent quality still justify premium CPCs in most categories. eMarketer projects Amazon will hold 76.9% of U.S. retail media ad spend through end of 2026, down from 80.4% in 2024, but still dominant.
Walmart Connect is a genuine second-tier opportunity, not a replacement strategy. The brands getting the most from it in 2026 share three characteristics: they already sell on Walmart.com with optimized listings and strong Item Quality Scores; they’re in categories where Walmart’s physical store footprint creates measurable lift; and they have the budget floor — at minimum $5,000–$8,000/month — to run campaigns long enough to generate optimization data.
For DTC founders and marketplace operators planning H2 2026 and 2027 budgets, the strategic question isn’t Amazon vs. Walmart Connect. It’s whether your catalog, operational infrastructure, and media budget are mature enough to run both platforms simultaneously without diluting execution quality on either. For most brands under $5M in marketplace revenue, the answer is still no. For brands above that threshold with Walmart distribution already in place, the answer is increasingly yes — and the window of cheap CPC arbitrage on Walmart Connect is unlikely to last past 2027.
