Plastering ads all over New York City subways is one effective way to get attention – including, apparently, from Walmart.
On Tuesday, Walmart announced that it is buying Vibe.co, the French self-serve ad platform that specializes in helping small brands buy streaming commercials with similar ease and precision as they get from search and social.
Vibe has been vying for a bigger share of the ad dollars moving to connected TV, especially in the US, as evidenced by the company’s ubiquitous billboards in major cities, including New York and San Francisco. Now, Vibe joins Walmart Connect’s commerce ecosystem alongside the smart TV maker Vizio. And Vibe’s tech is poised to help unify Walmart’s growing CTV footprint with the closed-loop attribution provided by its retail sales data.
The deal price is $1.4 billion, The Wall Street Journal reported. And it’s clear that performance is the name of the game.
Together, Walmart and Vibe.co strive to “build the best ecosystem for the performance TV market,” Vibe CEO and Co-Founder Arthur Querou told AdExchanger.
Performance sells
Performance CTV has a high ceiling for growth. The performance budgets dedicated for streaming platforms are still small potatoes compared to search and social, Querou said.
Only one-quarter of CTV ad campaigns have lower-funnel objectives, and that number has been static for years, according to data from Advertiser Perceptions.
Now that Walmart owns both Vibe and Vizio, advertisers should have an easier time tying streaming campaigns to shopper data. That promise stands to win Walmart more marketing dollars earmarked for retail media and streaming behemoths, including Amazon.
Walmart is especially interested in attracting more small- and medium-size businesses (SMBs) who lack the tools, budgets or teams to invest in streaming TV, a Walmart spokesperson told AdExchanger.
Other ad platforms, including MNTN and Magnite, have likewise targeted SMB advertisers as a source for continued growth in the CTV market. By adding Vibe.co, Walmart can court SMBs with the pitch that its new self-serve tools will make it easier for them to execute CTV campaigns.
Plus, SMBs tend to prioritize performance campaigns, since they are under more pressure to justify tighter ad budgets and thus have to be more selective about which platforms they advertise on. And Walmart is better positioned than most platforms to prove its ads drove performance thanks to its retail data foundation.
Growth by addition
Meanwhile, the intense competition for connected TV ad dollars is causing a cascade of consolidation across the media industry. In just the last month, the DOJ approved Paramount Skydance’s acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery, and Fox announced plans to buy Roku. Now, we can add Walmart’s Vibe.co deal to the list.
Walmart is no stranger to ad tech acquisitions. Gobbling up Vizio in 2024 is just the tip of the iceberg.
Here’s a quick history: Walmart bought an ad tech startup called Polymorph Labs in 2019 for help targeting online ads using shopper data. Then came Thunder, a creative automation company that Walmart bought in 2021 as part of its foray into self-serve advertising. The Walmart subsidiary Sam’s Club also bought an ad tech stack from Triad, a WPP-owned agency that shut down after losing business from retail partners, including Walmart.
These acquisitions set the foundation for Walmart to become a major CTV player upon buying Vizio for $2.3 billion two years ago. Walmart has been busy incorporating Vizio’s data and technology into its ad stack since then. And, in March, Walmart announced intentions to centralize its identity spine by requiring Vizio device owners to log in using Walmart accounts.
In other words, Walmart has been adding pieces to its tech offering to give advertisers the closed-loop attribution that will help them optimize their campaigns and thus justify future investments.
But it will take more time to see how this week’s acquisition steers the competition for streaming ad dollars.
For now, we’ll be listening for more updates from CTV Ad Land from the shores of Cannes.
