Walmart (WMT) is acquiring connected-TV ad platform Vibe.co in what the retailer is calling its largest deal in two years, extending its push to compete directly with Amazon in the fast-growing retail-media advertising market.
The acquisition signals that Walmart is doubling down on high-margin advertising revenue as a structural growth driver, a strategy analysts say could meaningfully lift operating-income growth beyond what its core retail business alone can deliver.
Key Takeaways
- Walmart acquires Vibe.co, a connected-TV advertising technology platform.
- Deal marks Walmart’s largest acquisition in two years.
- Move accelerates Walmart’s retail-media rivalry with Amazon.
Market Reaction & Context
Walmart’s advertising arm, Walmart Connect, was already forecast to grow ad revenue by nearly 40% in 2024 – the fastest projected rate among all major U.S. ad sellers, according to Insider Intelligence data 1. That growth rate outpaced rivals including Amazon (AMZN), Target (TGT), and Instacart (CART), all of which are also racing to monetise shopper data through digital ad inventory.
Amazon, the third-largest digital ad seller globally behind Alphabet and Meta, reported 27% year-over-year growth in its advertising services segment in its most recent quarterly filing 1. Walmart’s Vibe.co acquisition is a direct attempt to close that capability gap on the living-room screen.
Why Connected TV, Why Now
Vibe.co enables brands to place and measure advertising through internet-connected televisions – a surface that commands premium ad rates and is increasingly central to how consumer-goods companies reach households. The deal follows Walmart’s $2.3 billion purchase of smart-TV maker Vizio in early 2024, which brought 18 million smart-TV accounts onto Walmart’s data platform 1.
Taken together, the Vizio hardware and the Vibe.co software give Walmart a vertically integrated stack: the screen, the operating system, and now a self-serve programmatic layer for ad buyers. That architecture mirrors the closed-loop model Amazon has used to attract brand advertisers who want to link ad exposure directly to purchase data.
The Retail-Media Arms Race
Walmart’s advertising build-out stretches back several years. In 2021 the company rebranded its ad-sales unit from Walmart Media Group to Walmart Connect and acquired automation technology from Thunder Industries to serve small-business advertisers with self-serve display tools 2. A partnership with The Trade Desk (TTD) also let brands use Walmart shopper data to buy targeted ads across the open web, not just on Walmart-owned properties.
“Digital advertising is the future of Walmart,” TD Cowen senior research analyst Oliver Chen said in comments on the company’s earlier Vizio deal 1. The Vibe.co acquisition extends that thesis into streaming video, where ad-supported viewing has surged since 2022.
Retailers have a structural advantage in this market that pure-play digital platforms lack: deterministic purchase data. As Google and Apple continue to restrict third-party cookies and device-level tracking, closed-loop attribution – knowing which ad drove which sale – becomes more valuable. “As any type of cross-platform tracking becomes more difficult, if you have some type of closed system, that closed-loop attribution becomes a big part of the attraction,” Nicole Perrin, principal analyst at eMarketer, said in an earlier analysis of retail-media dynamics 2.
Outlook
Walmart has not disclosed financial terms of the Vibe.co transaction. The deal is the latest in a sequence of moves – Thunder Industries, Trade Desk partnership, Vizio, and now Vibe.co – that collectively reposition Walmart as a media and data company sitting alongside its traditional retail operations.
For investors, the key metric to watch is the advertising revenue line within Walmart Connect, which the company does not yet break out as a standalone segment. If Walmart follows Amazon’s disclosure trajectory, a formal advertising revenue segment could eventually emerge as one of the highest-margin items on the income statement, providing a re-rating catalyst for WMT shares.
Not investment advice. For informational purposes only.
References
1Hamza Shaban (Feb 23, 2024). “Walmart’s latest fight with Amazon is digital advertising”. Yahoo Finance. Retrieved June 23, 2026.
2Sahil Patel and Alexandra Bruell (Feb 4, 2021). “Walmart Buys Ad Tech to Chase Small-Business Advertisers”. The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved June 23, 2026.