Walmart (NYSE: WMT) has quietly grown its advertising operation into one of the most significant retail media businesses in the world, generating $6.4 billion in global ad revenue for fiscal year 2026.
That figure represents 46% year-over-year growth, underscoring how rapidly the company has transformed advertising into a core pillar of its broader business model.
The roots of this expansion trace directly to Walmart’s acquisition of television manufacturer Vizio in December 2024 for approximately $2.2 billion, a deal that reshaped the U.S. retail media landscape.
Walmart Chief Growth Officer Seth Dallaire explained the strategic logic of the Vizio deal at the Sixth Annual Evercore Retail and Consumer Conference, noting that the TV hardware business “sits adjacent to the advertising businesses that we run.”
Dallaire acknowledged that the purchase puzzled some observers, given that Walmart is primarily known as a retailer rather than a consumer electronics company.
“And the reality is that we sell a lot of TVs at Walmart. And the television business is no longer the domain of the sort of buy it for wholesale, sell it for retail, and keep the margin. The real television business is now post-sale,” Dallaire said.
At the time the Vizio acquisition closed, the company’s SmartCast operating system had 19.1 million active users, who collectively streamed 5.8 billion hours during the third quarter of 2024 alone.
By combining Vizio’s connected TV platform with Walmart’s deep reservoir of customer purchase data, the company now offers advertisers a powerful tool for personalized targeting and measurable conversion tracking.
In Q4 fiscal year 2026, Walmart disclosed that advertising and membership income together accounted for roughly one-third of operating profit, a striking shift for a company historically defined by thin retail margins.
According to EMARKETER, Amazon Ads commanded 79.7% of the U.S. retail media market in 2025, while Walmart Connect ranked second at 8.0%, more than five times the share of Target Roundel, which held 1.5%.
RTMNexus CEO Dominick Miserandino, who advises retailers on media network strategy, described the structural advantage that companies like Walmart hold over traditional advertisers.
“I’ve actually been advising a few retailers on their retail media network strategy. And it is a very interesting shift because retailers have all the data in terms of their customers, allowing for the targeting, but in addition, they own an audience for X period of time, whether they’re in the store or on the site,” Miserandino said.
Miserandino further noted that ownership of that audience opens doors beyond simple targeting, allowing retailers to offer access to complementary, non-competing brands seeking to reach those same shoppers.
“So certain retailers are realizing that when they own that audience, they can not only use it for targeting, but additionally have other brands who are supplemental and not competing, target the direct audience that they own,” he added.
Walmart’s advertising platform spans sponsored product listings, display banners, in-store digital screens, and connected TV inventory through Vizio, giving brands a broad range of formats and placements.
Third-party marketplace sellers, who operate on Walmart’s platform in a model similar to Amazon’s, represent a faster-growing segment of the ad business than first-party brand budgets.
Dallaire indicated there is “a lot of runway into the future” for the advertising unit, noting Walmart is not yet “in the neighborhood of some of the best-in-class competitors” when measuring ad revenue as a percentage of gross merchandise value.
