Walmart Connect just put a number on what a lot of operators already suspected.
Pairing Onsite Display with Sponsored Products is not a vanity add-on. It is how you get in front of shoppers before they type.
What happened (confirmed)
On September 7, Walmart Connect published its playbook from the Let's Grow! 2026 Marketplace Seller Summit. Two first-party stats matter for operators heading into Q4:
• Sellers who paired Onsite Display with Sponsored Products saw a 45% median increase in ad-attributed sales from new-to-brand buyers, versus sellers running Sponsored Products alone.
• Marketplace sellers using both Walmart Fulfillment Services and Sponsored Products generated, on average, more than 5x higher annual GMV than sellers using WFS alone.
Walmart Connect framed the operating model in three lines: Be discovered. Grow smarter. Grow beyond search. The company also pointed at campaign recommendations and automated bidding as the path to less spreadsheet work and more strategy.
Source: Walmart Connect, "Grow beyond: Walmart Connect's playbook from the Let's Grow! 2026 Walmart Marketplace Seller Summit," September 7, 2026. Footnotes: WFS + Sponsored Products GMV lift uses Walmart first-party data Feb. 1, 2024-Jan. 31, 2025. Display + Sponsored Products new-to-brand lift uses Walmart first-party data Feb 2024-Jan 2025 vs Feb 2025-Jan 2026 (retrieved Feb 2026), excluding Marketplace sellers with annual total sales at or under $10k. New-to-brand = no purchase from the brand in the prior 12 months. Past performance does not guarantee future results.
Why this matters
Most Walmart media plans still start and end in Sponsored Products. That is fine for capture. It is weak for acquisition when shoppers form brand opinions before they ever search.
Walmart is telling you the same thing in its own data: discovery media plus search converts more new buyers, and fulfillment plus ads compounds GMV. If your Connect budget is 90% search because "ROAS looks cleaner," you are optimizing the report, not the funnel.
This also lands next to Annual Event inbound. Tomorrow is September 15, Walmart's WFS receive-by for the Annual Event. Buying display into listings that will not be Fulfilled by Walmart when traffic spikes is how you pay for clicks you cannot convert.
Who it affects most
• Brands running Sponsored Products only and calling that a full Walmart Connect strategy
• Teams measuring success only on last-click ROAS and ignoring new-to-brand sales
• Sellers with WFS inventory but no Connect plan that uses discovery placements
• Operators buying Connect into Annual Event SKUs that will miss the September 15 WFS receive-by
• Multichannel brands treating Walmart as "Amazon lite" search ads with a second catalog
What sellers should do this week
1. Pull last-90-day Connect mix. If Onsite Display is under 15-20% of spend on your growth SKUs, test a paired Display + Sponsored Products structure on those ASINs.
2. Rank Walmart SKUs by new-to-brand potential: weak brand search, strong category demand, and a PDP that can convert cold traffic. Put display dollars there first.
3. Confirm WFS badge and two-day promise on anything you are about to promote. Do not scale discovery into a seller-fulfilled listing heading into Annual Event traffic.
4. Rebuild reporting so new-to-brand ad-attributed sales sit next to ROAS. If you only celebrate last-click efficiency, you will keep cutting the channel that brings the new buyers.
5. Treat WFS and Connect as one plan, not two budgets. Walmart's own 5x GMV figure is the case for that.
Our take
Walmart did not invent "go beyond search." It just published the number that makes the argument hard to ignore.
45% more new-to-brand ad sales when you add display. 5x GMV when WFS and Sponsored Products run together. The operators who win Q4 on Walmart will stop running Connect like a second Amazon search auction and start running it like a demand system.
Still stuck in Sponsored Products-only? CoreTrex will rebuild your Walmart Connect mix around the SKUs that can actually convert discovery traffic, keep spend on WFS-ready listings, and measure new-to-brand the way Walmart does. Talk to a strategist.