Walmart takes on Amazon… in advertising – The Wall Street Journal

Walmart, the world’s largest retailer, wants to become a big seller of advertisements too, as Amazon expands its share of the online advertising market.

Published on:

28 Feb 2019, 2:00 am

DUBLIN — It's like a gold rush. Companies like Facebook and Google were the first to strike it rich, turning their giant troves of customer data into cash through the alchemy of advertising sales. Now, everyone is trying to get a piece of the action. Amazon has been panning for gold successfully – it has become America's third-biggest seller of digital ads (after Facebook and Google). Walmart is reportedly hoping to find its own rich ore vein by leveraging the huge amount of information it has about the people who visit its thousands of stores. But the advertising gold rush raises a few questions. After all, there's only so much ad budget to go around. Digital advertising can continue to achieve double-digit growth for a good while yet by cannibalising TV, print, outdoor, and other traditional outlets. The bigger question is – how much can the overall advertising pie grow? After all, advertising is just a line item on the budgets of the world's consumer products – food, fashion, electronics, and the like. Is the gold rush a mirage, a mere reshuffling of existing ad dollars from one outlet to another? Or are there enough untapped markets out there – consumers in Africa and Asia, say – to sustain an advertising gold rush for years to come? And what about the emerging issues of data privacy? Will Walmart find itself embroiled in the type of privacy scandals that Facebook has been dealing with for the last few years? Gold rushes are thrilling and offer enormous rewards. But they are not risk-free. – Felicity Duncan