Google and Walmart Connect link YouTube ads to store sales data

Walmart is making its media business harder for brands to ignore and harder for store teams to miss. Google said on June 11 that advertisers using Display & Video 360 can now buy Walmart Connect audiences for YouTube campaigns and measure whether those ads lead to sales at Walmart through closed-loop measurement.

The rollout starts with YouTube and will expand to more inventory types later. Walmart Connect said the integration lets advertisers activate its first-party audiences and see how video reach and awareness campaigns affect sales, a selling point for marketers trying to prove return on budget in a crowded season. Google added that viewers watch an average of 110 million hours of shopping content on YouTube every day, which helps explain why the platform matters for retail media.

For Walmart, the partnership extends a business that already reaches about 150 million U.S. customers every week across stores and online. Walmart renamed its media operation Walmart Connect in January 2021 and said then that the business could accelerate the link between brands and those customers. It also pointed to nearly 170,000 digital screens across more than 4,500 stores, a reminder that the retailer’s ad business is not just about screens online but also about what shoppers see once they walk into the store.

That matters on the floor. If brands can prove a YouTube campaign drove Walmart sales, more of them may push seasonal items, featured products and higher-margin categories through Walmart Connect. That can mean more customer questions at the shelf, more attention to promoted items and more pressure on department managers to keep price labels, displays and inventory lined up with the ad promise. In practical terms, the tighter the media plan, the tighter the execution has to be in store.

The move also fits Walmart’s broader push to make advertising a bigger part of the company’s growth story. In December 2025, Walmart Connect was reported to have grown 33% in the U.S. in the prior quarter, and CFO John David Rainey said advertising had become one of the areas changing Walmart’s P&L the most. Walmart and The Trade Desk also ended exclusivity in their ad-tech arrangement in 2025, giving Walmart room to work with other platforms like Google.

Ryan Mayward, Walmart Connect’s general manager and senior vice president, said the company had recently expanded access to Walmart first-party data across buying platforms. The Google deal is another step in that direction: Walmart is turning store traffic and shopping history into a buying signal for advertisers, and that makes its media business even more tied to daily retail operations.