Q&A with Dana Toering, Vice President, Walmart Connect
A Look Back on 2021 & What’s Ahead for 2022
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We connect brands more meaningfully in customers’ everyday lives to accelerate shared growth.
We chatted with Dana Toering, Vice President of Walmart Connect, the company’s omni channel retail media solution provider, about the highlights of 2021 and what the company has planned to help brands succeed in 2022.
Q:
Walmart Connect strives to be the number one omnichannel provider of advertiser solutions in the country. With that in mind, how has 2021 played out?
A:
2021 has gone well. We’ve learned how to leverage what we know about the Walmart shopper to build solutions that are empowering brands to connect with customers in more meaningful ways - on our website, in-app, and in store. Expanding customer touchpoints delivers measurable results that drive growth more efficiently for brands and a better customer shopping experience, as we transform from traditional retailer to leading omnichannel provider.
Q:
What is the biggest lesson you’ve learned since rebranding from Walmart Media Group to Walmart Connect in 2021?
A:
The biggest lesson is that it takes strong partnerships to make it work. The rebrand was purposeful because we’re doing more than just media. We’re all about connections. It’s not enough to just serve the right ad to the right person at the right time. It’s about creating great customer experiences. Across the Walmart ecosystem, there are opportunities for brands to engage and influence customers in creative ways as they search for products.
Q:
Can you share a few insights on how brands are maximizing their relationship with Walmart Connect?
A:
It really seems to vary by category. Consumer packaged good companies have really leaned into what we do. They see the value in our first-party data and how well we understand our shared customer.
We have also made great strides within the toy category in 2021 and small appliance companies have done well. Across categories, many brands are directed by what the data is saying and as a part of Walmart, we are very close to the end customer. We’re right there, at the point of transaction.
The brands that work with us to build a strategic plan and take advantage of all opportunities to leverage our first-party data in unique ways to maximize media efficiency across channels – digitally and in store – are the ones seeing continued growth.
Q:
According to your data, what consumer trend should matter most to brands in 2022? How will you lean into it at Walmart Connect?
A:
Our insights say consumers' shopping behaviour will continue to evolve. Change is truly the only constant in today’s uncertain retail landscape, and we believe a holistic approach is the best way forward. Digitally and in-store, brands can leverage the right mix of offerings to address changing behaviours and the right mix of solutions to create those great omnichannel customer experiences.
As well, Walmart is a brand-safe environment. This is important for brands, because online is where we’re seeing tremendous growth and shifts in consumer behaviour. Ads can end up in contextually irrelevant placements in other online environments. We don’t have that problem, in-app or on Walmart.ca.
Q:
In a recent Walmart Connect Unboxed segment you spoke about “media the way you want to purchase it,” and making it easy for brands to work with you. What tools/capabilities will you add to drive their ROI and an even better customer experience in 2022?
A:
We’ll double-down on launching some key pillars for self-service and automation in 2022. “Search” is a huge opportunity for brands to get noticed, added to basket, drive product awareness and share product-level detail. Walmart gets millions of searches each day. There’s opportunity for an “always-on” strategy where brands are in front of customers when they’re actively searching for products. Even as in-store shopping returns, e-commerce adoption and digital ad spend should remain a priority for brands.
We’ll continue to evolve our targeted advertising platforms. I spoke earlier about activation of our first-party data. A brand might want to target coffee shoppers who buy coffee at Walmart while the customers are on YouTube, or their social feed, or building a Pinterest storyboard. We’re creating opportunities to move beyond our own ecosystem. We want brands to be able to leverage our data to target customers in those other moments.
We’ll also offer more self-service and automated ways to transact. Think of a smaller brand that lacks high brand recognition or a large budget but wants to be in that upper echelon of consideration in their category. We want to give them a way to transact using a self-service approach. They can go into our system, create an ad and get it live within our search results using a credit card. It’s an opportunity for Walmart to extend inclusion.
For our bigger vendors, we’re working on a partnership with a demand-side media buying platform where vendors control the buying process and the activation of our data.
Then there’s content marketing; smaller, but equally exciting. We’ll offer richer modular experiences beyond display and native ads, enabling brands to build deeper, lasting relationships with customers through Walmart’s digital assets.
Q:
What are you proudest of in 2021 and what excites you for 2022?
A:
In 2021, from beginning to end we’ve wrapped our arms around Walmart’s customer-centric approach. A close second is how we’ve embraced the One-Walmart approach. We don’t operate in a silo at Connect, we’re part of the fabric of the entire Walmart ecosystem. We partner with customer marketing teams to meet category-growth objectives; with our merchant organization to align with brand growth goals; and with the e-commerce team to deliver those meaningful customer ad experiences that drive shared growth.
In 2022, we’ll evolve our measurement offering so that it’s even more effective for advertisers. We want to lead with insights. Leading with insights vs just leading with a plan are two different things. Insights are hyper-focused on the customer — all those key metrics will just make everything we do smarter!
