Dive Brief:

• Walmart’s retail media network is far ahead of the pack compared to U.S. peers when it comes to delivering advertising impressions, a report by Sensor Tower revealed.
• The big-box store saw 11 billion impressions in Q1 while No.2 Target generated fewer than 7 billion impressions. Chewy, The Home Depot and Kroger rounded out the top-five list.    
• Breaking out performance, Walmart landed on top for onsite media impressions, meaning it has better monetized its owned properties. These findings come as retail media networks are pushing harder into offsite media to tap into additional revenue streams. 

Dive Insight:

Sensor Tower’s analysis offers a peek into the top-performing retail media networks in the U.S., excluding Amazon, which effectively operates in a category of its own. Walmart’s lead position is perhaps unsurprising: It is the largest traditional retailer in the country and has invested heavily in its retail media network Walmart Connect, including through ambitious bets on building out an ad-tech infrastructure. Walmart Connect also has data-sharing partnerships with major platforms and publishers, including TikTok and Disney.

Those types of relationships have allowed Walmart to engage nonendemic brands and deliver a high level of advertising impressions both onsite, on properties like Walmart.com, and offsite. Offsite media is forecast to fuel much of the retail media category’s growth this year as owned channels mature and near their limit on ad saturation.

Sensor Tower’s findings show that many retail media networks have achieved a high degree of scale, even in more specialized categories. Retailers in verticals like pet supplies (Chewy), home improvement (The Home Depot) and beauty and cosmetics (Ulta and Sephora) saw over 1 billion impressions in Q1.

Different industries focus on different tactics based on their owned assets and the types of advertisers to which they cater. Kroger, the grocery giant, landed in the No. 5 spot largely based on offsite impressions. Chewy was also carried by offsite, landing in third. Conversely, Target and Best Buy, more generalist stores, saw the majority of their impressions come from onsite channels.

Breaking the numbers out by advertiser groups, personal care was the leading category at nearly 4.5 billion impressions, providing a boost to Ulta and Sephora. Food and beverage, pet supplies and home and garden were some of the other advertiser segments with the highest levels of retail media activity.

Deeper advertiser partnerships helped drive performance for some retail media networks. Chewy’s co-branded ads with Purina PetCare resulted in over 900 million impressions, Sensor Tower found.

Retail media is the fastest-growing area of digital marketing and has benefited from the deprecation of legacy ad-targeting methods like cookies. The space began to boom in earnest during the pandemic but its momentum shows signs of cooling. Researcher WARC expects retail media will experience 10.6% growth next year as trade budgets start to be tapped out.