Walmart Audiences lets you target your CTV campaigns using segments built from Walmart commerce signals. They help you reach the households that just bought, or are looking to buy, what you sell. For example, you can reach recent moisturizer buyers if you sell skincare, or upcoming movers if you sell moving services.
You'll find them in the In-Market & Interests section of any new or existing campaign, marked by Walmart. You can pick segments yourself, or let the Smart select agent suggest a starting list. You review that list before anything goes live.
Before you start
Walmart Audiences are available to all Vibe users. You don't need to set anything up or connect an integration. You'll just need to do a one-time acceptance of Walmart's standard terms for use of Walmart Audiences when they pop up in the platform.
If you plan to use Smart select, upload your creatives first. The agent uses them to rank segments. It still works without them, but it will tell you which inputs it skipped.
Your existing campaigns are not affected. They keep running exactly as configured.
Walmart Audiences are available on Awareness, Traffic, Leads, Sales and App installs campaigns. Retargeting and ABM campaigns can't use them. There is no extra cost for using Walmart Audiences, and you don't need to sell at Walmart to use them.
What's in the catalog
Walmart Audiences come in two types, and you can use both in the same campaign.
Personas — Who a customer is based on: life stage, lifestyle, shopping habits, including during seasonal moments. 300+ segments, for example: women's beauty, men's grooming, healthy living, recent movers, new parents, upper-tier spenders, Mother's Day, Big 6 Shopping Days.
Category buyers — What a customer buys or is about to buy, grouped by department. 2900+ segments, for example: dog supplies, reptile food, quilting, whole bean coffee.
Seasonal Personas are derived from customer shopping habits tied to holidays and events on the retail calendar, so you can time them to your campaign dates. For example, use a "New Year, New You" Persona in January or a Tax Day Persona in March.
Audience types for Category buyers
For each Category buyer segment, you choose an audience type:
Recent buyers: households that have bought in that category.
In-market: households showing signs that they're likely to buy soon.
Recent + In-market: both groups, combined into one segment.
ℹ️ Every segment shows its estimated number of households before you add it. The estimated reach for your whole selection updates as you add or remove segments.
Option 1: Smart select (recommended)
With thousands of segments to choose from, Smart select makes the first pass for you.
Open your campaign and go to In-Market & Interests.
Choose Smart select.
If you like, add your own context, such as a product line you want to push or a type of customer you want to avoid.
The agent returns a ranked list of segments. Each one shows its relevance score and number of households.
Review the list. You can remove any segment, change a segment's audience type, or add segments from the Next best row.
What the agent reads
Advertiser website — To understand your products and who buys them.
Advertiser category and category rules — To stay within the categories that fit your business.
Campaign creatives — To match segments to what your ad promotes and who it will appeal to.
Your own context (optional) — To steer the selection toward or away from specific products or customers.
If an input is missing, the agent works from the rest and tells you what it skipped. For example, it will say so if no creative has been uploaded yet.
Relevance score
Relevance is shown as a percentage. It estimates how closely the name of a segment matches the inputs the agent read. It is not a prediction of how the campaign will perform.
Option 2: Select manually
Open your campaign and go to In-Market & Interests.
Choose Select manually.
Browse by Persona, or by Category buyer department.
For Category buyer segments, pick the audience type: Recent buyers, In-market, or Recent + In-market.
Add the segments you want, then check the estimated reach against your budget.
Review and remove segments
Every segment you add, whether from Smart select or by hand, appears in your audience list. From there you can remove a segment, change its audience type, or add one of the suggested segments. Nothing from Smart select goes live until you launch the campaign.
How Walmart Audiences work with your other targeting
A household needs to match only one segment. If a household matches at least one of the segments you selected in In-Market & Interests, it's included.
Custom audiences and Web audiences don't change. They stay in their own sections of the campaign builder and work the same way as before.
Locations, schedules and placement controls don't change.
Walmart Audiences are applied as an Audience Control by default: your ads are shown only to households that match at least one of your segments. On Awareness, Traffic, Leads and Sales campaigns you can switch them to a Suggestion. See Understanding Audience Controls vs. Suggestions.
💡 A common setup: use Walmart Category buyers to reach new households in your category. Then use Web audiences to retarget the ones who visit your site after seeing your ad.
Your previous interest audiences
Vibe's previous interest audiences stay on campaigns that already use them. They can be removed but not added.
Good to know
Only Category buyer segments have an audience type (i.e., recent buyers or in-market buyers). Personas don't.
The "size" for each Walmart Audience indicates estimated households matched through Vibe's identity graph. The reach you actually get depends on your budget, your bid and your other targeting.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: Do I have to use Smart select?
A: No. Choose Select manually to browse the catalog yourself, or start from Smart select's list and edit it.
Q: Will Smart select change my campaign on its own?
A: No. Its picks go into your audience list for you to review and edit. Nothing goes live until you launch.
Q: Does a high relevance score mean better results?
A: Not necessarily. Relevance measures how well a segment name matches your inputs, not how the campaign will perform.
Q: Do I need to update my existing campaigns?
A: No. They keep running as configured. To add Walmart Audiences to one, open it (or duplicate it) and add segments in In-Market & Interests.
Q: Why do I have to accept Walmart Connect's terms?
A: Using Walmart Audiences requires accepting Walmart Connect's terms of use for the use of its data, and requires compliance with Walmart Connect's targeting policy. We ask once for the whole account, the first time someone selects a Walmart audience.
Q: What if I don't accept the terms?
A: You can't use Walmart Audiences. Your campaign and all other targeting work as usual.
Q: Do I get access to Walmart customer data?
A: No. You can target Walmart Audiences, but you never see, access, download or export customer-level data. Reporting shows aggregated campaign results only.
Q: Does Walmart see my campaign data?
A: No. Your campaign data remains within the Vibe reporting platform and is not transferred to Walmart.
Q: Does Smart select use AI on Walmart customer data?
A: No. Smart select works on audience names and descriptions and on your campaign inputs, not on customer-level data. Our AI provider does not train on this data.
Related Articles