Humza Tayyab, Senior Product Marketing Manager

As we kick off a new year, getting the most value possible from ad spend is top of mind for advertisers in the face of tightening economic conditions. Sponsored Search will play a vital role in the media marketing mix for advertisers to not only increase product visibility during purchase moments, but also to drive brand exposure.  

Last year, we made big investments in Sponsored Products with updates designed to boost relevancy, cost-efficiency, and buyer engagement, and it paid off. According to Walmart proprietary data, CTR for search in-grid position 1 is on average 4x higher than products in lower positions and the add-to-cart rate is on average 5X higher, proving a substantial ability to influence purchase behavior¹.

We’re keeping the momentum going in 2023 with the launch of variant bidding, a new way to optimize your search strategy to get more of your products noticed by customers.  

Introducing variant bidding—offering customers more choices

With this launch, you can advertise any item within your catalog beyond the primary variant, including size and color variations, to help increase discoverability and sales. Now, brands can gain exposure of more products and help customers find more options that meet their needs, presenting a big opportunity to: 

• Increase awareness, discoverability, and interest by expanding your catalog of promoted items to appear in more search results and get a larger variety of products noticed by new and existing customers

• Diversify and help grow revenue by increasing visibility of more items to identify high-performing variants that previously have been difficult for customers to discover  

• Support multiple goals, whether your objective is to promote best-selling items, bring awareness to a new variant item, or drive a seasonal moment

Tips and tricks for making the most of variant bidding 

Variant bidding is for any advertiser that is looking for the flexibility to promote multiple items. It is easy to use and get started with, whether you are creating a new campaign, adjusting an in-flight campaign or have never worked with Walmart Connect before. Here are some best practices to consider:

• Identify your goal: Decide which variants to promote based on your objective, for example, if you are trying to maximize profitability, consider focusing on specific variant items, or if you want to maximize visibility then promote your most popular and high-converting items. 

• Evaluate your catalog: Don’t put all your variants into one campaign. Focus first on the variants that are high-converting, best sellers, top priority, and seasonally relevant items to have an immediate impact  

• Test and Learn: As you start thinking about additional variants, be intentional with your bidding strategy as different campaigns have different needs. Create new campaigns and use unique identifiers for your keyword list.

Variant bidding is designed to optimize the shopping experience by providing customers with options that are more relevant to their search intent, helping them more easily discover products that best fit their needs. 

Contact our team to learn more about Walmart Search advertising and how you can start benefiting from variant bidding!

Source: ¹Walmart first-party data, Sept. 1 – Oct. 1, 2022. Seasonal data has not been factored into these results due to the given range of data; results may vary over a different period of time. Past results do not guarantee future performance.