Walmart Connect takes a play out of the Amazon playbook to make agentic AI the next battleground in retail media
By Kimeko McCoy • January 9, 2026 •
Ivy Liu
Walmart is going all in on artificial intelligence and agentic technologies for its ad platform. What was a retail media arms race has morphed into an agentic AI race so far this year, and Walmart seems to be taking aim at Amazon’s ad business.
On Tuesday, Walmart execs said they would put ads in Sparky, its AI shopping agent, as well as provide generative AI-powered performance insights and creative. There’s also Marty, Walmart’s agentic advertising assistant, in beta for sponsored search campaigns to help with billing and bidding, with plans to make it available widely later this year. The announcements come on the heels of Walmart’s tests last year with Sparky and Marty.
It’s a play out of Amazon Ad’s playbook with Rufus, which began running ads in 2024, according to commerce execs. At last year’s unBoxed conference, Amazon rolled out agentic AI tools that can generate creative, build campaigns, recommend targeting and write Amazon Marketing Cloud queries using natural language, as Digiday previously reported.
It’s a sign of the times. Retailers like Walmart and Amazon are chasing shoppers increasingly turning to AI chatbots for shopping.
“Integrated personalized and conversational shopping experiences are likely next to become standard in consumers’ heads and hearts, and rightfully so,” Mike O’Donnell, svp of innovation and business transformation at Flywheel, told Digiday via email.
The agentic AI playbook
Walmart itself reports 81% of customers say they’d use Sparky to check product availability and review product details before making a purchase. Before Walmart’s recent announcement, Walmart partnered with OpenAI to allow customers to shop with ChatGPT.
“Our goal with AI isn’t just innovation for its own sake; it’s about delivering real advertiser value at every level,” Khurrum Malik, vp of business and product marketing at Walmart Connect said in an email to Digiday.
This means the next retail media war is likely between Amazon’s Rufus and Walmart’s Sparky, experts say, each looking to reach scale.
Walmart, Amazon, and then everyone else
Two agency execs Digiday spoke with for this piece have already started testing Walmart’s slew of AI-powered tools. As with all AI-powered creative, brands are hesitant to hand over the reigns to AI agents. Commerce execs, however, are intrigued by Walmart’s Sparky sponsored prompts.
“The opportunity cost of missing out is clear for advertisers, but the lack of visibility and limited agentic tools has created some hesitation in jumping headfirst into new ad opportunities,” O’Donnell added.
Walmart’s ad business is already a standout in a sea of retail media networks. In 2024, Walmart Connect raked in $4.4 billion. In Q3 of 2025, Walmart reported its global ad business grew 53%, including 33% for Walmart connect in the U.S., per its earnings release.
In comparison, Amazon’s Q3 earnings showed its ad business grew 24% year-over-year to $17.7 billion.
“What Walmart uniquely brings to AI-first retail media, which in my view always comes back to their scale of first-party retail data and closed-loop measurement,” said Mike Feldman, svp of commerce at Flywheel.
At this point, commerce experts say Walmart has reached parity with its competitor Amazon, making the retail media landscape a matter of Amazon, Walmart and then a trailing list of long-tail players. Between the retailer’s AI-powered retail media, and consumer data from online and in-store purchases, experts expect the dollars to continue flowing.
“From my perspective, there’s a universe, maybe three or four years from now, where Walmart’s media business is of a similar size to Amazon’s,” said Ross Walker, director of retail media at Acadia.
Or as another commerce exec who spoke on-background puts it, “It’s Amazon. It’s Walmart. They’re the 800-pound gorillas in the room. And then, you’ve got everybody else.”
