Walmart Connect recently rolled out new enhancements to the search-relevancy algorithm that’s impacting advertisers of all sizes. Walmart sellers should be aware of these changes to implement optimization advertising efforts on the platform.
Items No Longer Need to Rank in the Top 128 Positions Organically
Previously, items advertised on Walmart were required to fall within the top 128 organic search results to be eligible for serving sponsored products in-grid. These new search relevancy enhancements improve the search results and brand ability to spend on Walmart by allowing any item to be promoted via Sponsored Products in order to appear in relevant in-grid results. This change also allows the same product to show up on the page as both paid and organic. Now, advertisers can serve ads for any relevant search query, based on context, customer intent, historical performance, and other factors. This is especially important for small brands or established brands with new product launches that typically wouldn’t appear within the first 128 results.
This means that you will now notice both organic and sponsored items in the search results (even if the items are the same). Previously, Walmart Connect limited these search results to one item (sponsored or organic) but is now allowing both listings to serve.
It’s important to stay mindful that this relates strictly to eligibility, therefore brands should still focus on optimizing their PDP titles, reviews, content, and other relevancy-driving factors to continue improving their paid search performance.
Advertisers can now bid on a wider range of keywords:
- These changes provide advertisers more opportunity to capture share of search even if they are not relevant enough or bidding high enough to win an ad slot above their organic listing. Use Pacvue Share of Voice to uncover related keywords that your competitors’ products are ranking for and add them to your campaigns.
- Build a long-tail keyword strategy to bid on low-CPC keywords while giving your products more opportunities to be discovered.
- Best practice: ensure keywords are in your product detail pages.
Request a demo today to learn more about how the Pacvue marketplace advertising platform can help you optimize and improve your advertising spend with Walmart Connect.
