Daily Brief: 

• Forbes has partnered with Walmart’s Creator platform for its inaugural Creator Upfronts, according to details shared with Marketing Dive. The publisher’s event is slated to be held Oct. 28-29 in Los Angeles. 
• The upfront is intended to connect marketers with influential creators. Programming will include panel conversations, and dozens of popular creators will take to the stage to pitch attendees.
• The event could help brands identify social commerce opportunities and comes as influencer marketing grows. The move could also boost Walmart Creator, which launched in 2023 as a one-stop portal for creators to monetize shoppable products from the retail giant. 

Dive Insight: 

Forbes’ tie-up with Walmart for its inaugural Creator Upfronts shows the growing influence creators hold over the advertising landscape. Forty-four percent of surveyed marketers plan to increase their investment in creators this year, according to findings from the Interactive Advertising Bureau and TalkShoppe. The deal also represents a continued push by Walmart to strengthen its digital marketing muscles and ability to drive social commerce.

“At Walmart, we believe creators are the lifeblood of social commerce and we are leaning into the momentum and opportunity in this space,” said William White, CMO at Walmart U.S., in a statement. 

The two-day event will bring together hundreds of creators and brands. Programming will provide attendees an opportunity to learn more about how creators develop content and build their audiences. The Creator Upfronts follows the model of the spring TV upfronts season, where advertisers commit in advance to spend a certain amount with traditional broadcasters.

The roster of participating creators hasn’t yet been set, though it will draw prominently from Forbes’ “Top Creator” list that typically releases in October. The gathering is intended to help creators and brands learn and grow in the social commerce space, which is expected to grow in U.S. sales from $67 billion in 2023 to over $144 billion by 2027, per Insider Intelligence. 

The Walmart Creator platform was launched in 2023 and now boasts tens of thousands of creators, with more than a thousand entrants joining each month, according to Ad Age. The offering gives participating creators the ability to monetize thousands of shoppable products from the retailer by enabling them to share product links to social platforms, gain product recommendations based on interests and collect performance data. 

Shoring up additional interest in its creator platform could help Walmart attract advertisers to its already-successful U.S. advertising business, Walmart Connect, which grew 26% during the company’s fiscal Q1. Walmart saw overall advertiser counts on Connect increase by nearly 19% during the period. Globally, Walmart’s advertising business grew 24% year over year. 

Walmart has worked to adapt to digital shopping in a number of ways. Last month, the retailer launched an immersive shopping platform, Walmart Realm, that allows users to browse virtual environments curated by online creators and purchase products within them. For last year’s holiday season, the company rolled out a 23-part shoppable commercial series, “Add to Heart,” that drew from romantic comedy tropes and ran on platforms like TikTok.