Walmart May Be Launching A Creator Marketplace

Source: Walmart

Walmart may launch a creator marketplace soon.

It recently filed trademarks for Walmart Creator and Walmart Creator Collective, which will provide social media consulting and “the promotion of goods and services of others through influencers.”

Walmart has yet to confirm this, but something will likely come to fruition. Walmart is quite active in the influencer marketing world, often running shopper and employee ambassador programs (fun fact: some of the first influencer marketing campaigns I ever ran were for Walmart). It also has been one of the early adopters in the U.S. with creator-led live shopping, having partnered with TikTok, Twitter, Talkshoplive, and other platforms.

Plus, Walmart already has a marketplace for its advertising business in Walmart Connect, where third-party sellers can purchase ads, showing a willingness to invest in these types of platforms.

Launching its own creator marketplace would allow Walmart to have more control over its influencer marketing initiatives and scale it even more. By creating a central location for creators and third-party sellers, Walmart would have more insight into its influencer marketing business across the company. It also could be able to scale it even more by opening creators of all sizes, especially when it comes to affiliates.

It will be interesting to see how this impacts Walmart's influencer agency and platform partners. Will this take away business from them? Or will this supplement what Walmart is already outsourcing to them?

As Shopify recently proved, everyone is looking to get a piece of the $16.4 billion influencer marketing industry.