点と点をつなぐ：ウォルマートの広告効果を包括的に捉えるアプローチ

概要

Walmart Connect advertising performance is shaped by more than campaign settings and bids. Inventory availability, Buy Box status, pricing, competitor activity, market demand, and in-store promotions can all influence advertising results. Yet these signals often sit in separate datasets, making it difficult for advertisers to understand why performance changes and which actions will have the greatest impact.

In this webinar, Kenton Snyder of Intentwise and Luke Waller of Walmart Connect explore how advertisers can connect advertising, retail, and market data to diagnose performance changes, uncover new search-term opportunities, and improve efficiency. The session also examines Walmart Connect’s negative keyword capabilities and measurement solutions that help brands understand the broader business impact of their advertising.

Why Walmart advertising needs a full-picture approach

Looking at Walmart Connect performance in isolation can lead to incorrect optimization decisions. A drop in return on ad spend (ROAS), for example, might not indicate that an advertising campaign is becoming less effective. The underlying cause could be a product going out of stock, losing the Buy Box, or experiencing a change in market demand.

Kenton recommends examining three interconnected areas:

• Advertising performance: Changes in cost per click (CPC), spend, search-term performance, and campaign results.
• 小売業の業績： Inventory availability, product pricing, Buy Box status, and in-store activity.
• 市況： Seasonality, competitor advertising, changes in category demand, and shifts in market share.

By combining these signals and reviewing how they change over time, advertisers can identify the likely cause of performance fluctuations before adjusting bids or budgets. If a product’s ROAS drops at the same time its in-stock rate declines, for example, restocking the product or reallocating spend may be more appropriate than broadly reducing advertising investment.

Discovering new search-term opportunities

Connecting advertising data with retail and market signals can also help advertisers identify search terms that deserve greater investment. A term discovered through broad-match or automatic campaigns may begin converting more effectively without receiving enough spend to realize its potential.

By analyzing changes in search-term performance and competitive activity, advertisers can identify opportunities to increase bids or allocate more budget to relevant, productive searches.

Kenton highlights Lavazza as an example of the potential impact. By identifying converting non-branded search terms and increasing bids on campaigns containing those terms, the brand achieved a 32% increase in new-to-brand order rates and 87% year-over-year revenue growth, as described in the webinar.

The broader lesson is to look beyond existing campaign performance and use connected data to find where additional investment could generate incremental growth.

Understanding the connection between online and in-store performance

Walmart shoppers move between digital and physical shopping experiences. Customers may discover products online before purchasing them in a store, or an in-store promotion may increase online search activity.

Advertisers therefore need to understand how changes in online visibility, in-store promotions, and store sales influence one another. The webinar highlights Advantage Health as an example of a brand that benefited from connecting the broader picture of Walmart performance, improving results on Walmart Connect as well as in-store.

Kenton and Luke also discuss Walmart Connect measurement capabilities that help brands better understand this relationship:

• Identity and attribution improvements: Connecting signals across Walmart’s ecosystem to support more precise targeting and unified, deduplicated attribution.
• Search incrementality: Helping advertisers understand the incremental sales generated by Walmart Connect search advertising.
• Store attribution reporting: Connecting Sponsored Search advertising with attributable in-store transactions.

These capabilities can help advertisers identify which campaigns and tactics contribute to in-store outcomes, rather than relying solely on online sales metrics.

Using negative keywords to improve advertising efficiency

Luke Waller explains how Walmart Connect’s negative keyword functionality gives advertisers more control over where Sponsored Products ads appear. The feature is available in manual campaigns across bidding strategies and keyword match types, as well as automatic campaigns using fixed bidding.

The goal is not simply to block more traffic. It is to exclude searches that do not support a campaign’s objectives while preserving opportunities that could still deliver value.

Negative exact vs. negative phrase

• Negative exact: Excludes a specific normalized search term without automatically blocking every query containing that term. This is useful when one particular search is irrelevant.
• Negative phrase: Excludes searches containing the specified phrase, providing broader coverage when an entire concept is irrelevant to the product.

Walmart normalizes search terms, including certain spelling variations, singular and plural forms, and synonyms. For example, excluding “couch” may also exclude “sofa.” Advertisers should therefore review the normalized terms affected before applying a negative keyword, particularly when using phrase match.

Evaluate relevance before excluding a search term

Low ROAS alone is not sufficient evidence that a search term should become a negative keyword. Advertisers should consider whether the search is relevant to the product, whether enough data has accumulated, and whether poor performance may be caused by inventory issues, Buy Box loss, bids, campaign structure, or product detail page (PDP) problems.

A search term with only one click and no sale provides little evidence. A term with thousands of clicks and consistently weak performance may be a stronger candidate, particularly if it is clearly irrelevant.

If a search is relevant but underperforming, adjusting bids, reviewing the product listing, or restructuring the campaign may be more appropriate than excluding the term entirely.

Protect campaign structure and product-level opportunities

Negative keywords can also help campaigns perform distinct roles. For example, a proven search term can be added as a negative exact keyword in related automatic, broad-match, or phrase-match campaigns so an exact-match campaign can focus on managing that known demand while other campaigns continue discovering new searches.

However, advertisers must account for how negatives apply at the ad-group level. Excluding a term can block every product in that ad group from serving against it, even when the term remains relevant to some products. Reviewing all items in the ad group—and separating products where necessary—helps prevent valuable traffic from being lost.

A practical workflow for identifying negative keyword candidates

Kenton outlines a data-driven process for finding terms that may be suitable for exclusion:

1. Review search-term performance over the last 30 days. Analyze results both across the account and at the individual product level.
2. Establish a click threshold. Determine how many clicks the account typically needs to generate an order. Kenton suggests considering a threshold of approximately two to 2.5 times that baseline without an order.
3. Check relevance. Confirm whether the search term makes sense for the products appearing against it.
4. Validate retail conditions. Check inventory and Buy Box status to determine whether retail issues explain the lack of conversions.
5. Apply negatives selectively. Exclude a term only when the data supports the decision and the relevant products and retail conditions have been considered.
6. Monitor the outcome. Review subsequent traffic, spend, sales, and remaining search terms to confirm that the change improves efficiency and directs investment toward the right opportunities.

If a search term appears to underperform because a product was unavailable or lacked the Buy Box, address that issue first and revisit the term during a later review.

Turning connected data into better decisions

The webinar closes with three central recommendations:

• Connect the signals: Evaluate advertising, retail, and market data together to identify the root cause of performance changes.
• Invest in what works: Increase investment in search terms and opportunities that demonstrate meaningful potential, including opportunities that may influence in-store sales.
• Reduce waste selectively: Use negative keywords to improve efficiency only after validating relevance, data sufficiency, and retail conditions.

During the Q&A, Luke discusses Walmart Connect’s measurement capabilities and how online advertising can contribute to in-store sales. The speakers also address the potential for AI to make this kind of analysis easier. Kenton describes how Intentwise’s AI Gateway and MCP server are intended to help users ask questions across connected datasets and work toward faster, more accessible performance diagnosis.

結論

Improving Walmart Connect efficiency requires more than reacting to changes in ROAS. By connecting advertising results with inventory, Buy Box, pricing, in-store activity, and market conditions, advertisers can distinguish genuine advertising problems from broader retail issues, discover new search-term opportunities, and make more informed budget decisions. Combined with careful negative keyword management and better measurement of online and in-store outcomes, this full-picture approach helps brands focus their investment where it can create the greatest value.

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