Retail media networks rely on driving conversions—and Walmart is no exception. Its search results are saturated with ads, with 97% of queries serving at least one sponsored product, per Pentaleap data.

But Walmart is also growing its upper-funnel capabilities, using its stores to do it despite physical retail’s traditional role as a bottom-of-the-funnel channel.

“When we think about the store, we’ve always thought about it from this pure sales perspective,” said Ethan Chernofsky during EMARKETER’s virtual summit earlier this year. But the “pure marketing value of the eyeballs that pass a physical location” is extremely valuable for marketers.

Bringing digital discovery into the aisle

In April, Walmart announced the opening of its newest Supercenter in Cypress, Texas.

• In addition to a refreshed look and feel, the store features digital QR codes throughout the store that customers can use to access digital tools and an extended online assortment.
• Shoppers at the Cypress location can use the Walmart App for store services like TV mounting, registry enhancement, or tire installation.

The approach reflects changing shopper behavior—28% of US adults use their phone to research products in-store, according to June 2025 data from SPAR Group.

• The most common actions are price checks (44%) and hunting for promos (41%), but nearly a third (30%) access retailer apps, and over one in five (22%) scan QR codes.

Bridging marketplace and store shelves

Walmart has also begun bringing items from its digital third-party marketplace to store aisles, giving shoppers a wider array of goods and enabling third-party sellers to widen their reach.

• Walmart’s US marketplace sales grew 20% in its latest quarter, according to the company’s earnings report.
• The marketplace surpassed 200,000 active sellers for the first time this year, according to data from Marketplace Pulse.

The retail media payoff: By building its full-funnel capabilities, Walmart helps advertisers reach consumers earlier, unify physical and digital campaigns, and better measure in-store activations.

• The greatest value of a full-funnel retail media strategy lies in its ability to deliver consistent messaging across the customer experience—an advantage cited by 61% of marketers, according to Skai’s 2025 The State of Retail Media Report.
• Marketers also value the ability to shape consumer decisions at every stage of the journey (59%) and enable more informed, data-driven choices throughout the funnel (58%).

Ideally, marketers should stop viewing in-store retail media as influencing behavior during just one visit, said Chernofsky.

“Take a step back and ask what’s the lifetime value of the customer and what role does the store play in driving that,” he said.

This was originally featured in the Commerce Media Weekly newsletter. For more marketing insights, statistics, and trends, subscribe here.