Walmart Connect programme run against item readiness

We run Walmart Connect for supplier brands, and no item receives a bid until it passes a readiness check: in-stock above 92 percent across the trailing 28 days, the category attribute set filled in Item 360, and store distribution known store by store rather than as a national average. About a third of the accounts brought to us fail that check on first read, and their first month is spent on the item file rather than on bids. Why the item comes before the bid: Walmart grades the supplier long before a shopper sees an ad. An order that misses the On-Time In-Full window costs three percent of the cost of goods on that order, and the same shortfall that earns the fine is what empties the shelf your search spend points at. Share of search bought against an item that goes out of stock in week three pays for a competitor's review count. None of that appears in an advertising report, which is why we read the supply data first and the campaign data second. The first six weeks: Every item with distribution is scored on in-stock, content completeness, ratings volume and store count, and gets a written verdict: spend, hold, or delist before anyone advertises it. The account is then rebuilt around the items that survived. Search terms are sorted into three books — the item's own identity terms, category terms it can hold on price and review count, and conquest terms where you have a position rather than an ambition. Sponsored Brands and video run only where a second item stands to enter the basket. Running it: Bids are revised weekly against item-level in-stock and store-count feeds, because a bid is a supply decision before it is a media one. On-site display and Walmart DSP are flighted to modular resets and your merchant's promotional calendar rather than run flat through the year. Money moves between items on the readiness read, not on yesterday's return. You get a Monday note saying what changed and why, and one call a month that is about next quarter rather than last week. How it is measured: Attributed return inside Walmart Connect is used to allocate within the account and never as evidence the programme worked. For that we hold out — matched stores or a suppressed geography, eight weeks minimum, read on total item movement in Scintilla, the Walmart Data Ventures suite sold as Luminate until its 2025 rename. If the holdout says the incremental return sits below our fee, that sentence goes in the same report, in the same size type, and we will help you wind the programme down. Not included: Item setup, photography and copy production. We specify what is wrong and hand it to your content team or your agency. Marketplace seller operations, Walmart Fulfillment Services logistics and OTIF disputes stay with you. We do not negotiate joint business plan commitments with your merchant, though we will say plainly when a media commitment inside a JBP is a shelf tax and belongs in trade spend rather than in this line. Who this is not for: Marketplace-only sellers fighting for the buy box on price — this work assumes a merchant, a modular position, and a supply chain that can answer questions. Brands that need a number to look a particular way by quarter end. Anyone who wants a reported return as the headline rather than an incremental one: we will not present last-touch as though it were causal, and there is no tier of this engagement where that changes.