Sam’s Club Member Access Platform (MAP) Pioneers True Closed-Loop, Omnichannel Attribution for Advertising

Advertisers gain visibility and efficiency with accurate, real-time attribution of in-club and online purchases driven by search and sponsored product campaigns

BENTONVILLE, Ark.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sam's Club®, a division of Walmart Inc. and a leading membership warehouse club, is announcing that advertisers can now attribute in-club purchases to their search ads. This innovation means Sam’s Club is among the first and possibly the only retail media platform to connect search and sponsored product ads to offline sales.

Because of the real-time nature of consumer search, advertisers have had longstanding challenges attributing sales to specific campaigns. In-store attribution was especially difficult. Other retailers may offer offline reporting metrics, but they rely on loyalty card purchases or panel data, which are estimates that do not include all consumer purchase behavior.

In contrast, Sam’s Club Member Access Platform (MAP) has real-time, first-party omnichannel data on member transactions, including in-club, in-app and web. As a result, MAP delivers accurate transaction data, without extrapolation or panel estimates. For the first time, advertisers have the ability to see exactly what revenue is generated by which ads, including search and sponsored products campaigns.

This attribution innovation leads to higher return on ad spend (ROAS) and increased sales in a truly omnichannel way. For Sam’s Club MAP advertisers, overall ROAS has increased an average of nearly 30% since adding in-club sales to the attribution mix.

"Sam's Club MAP is opening up a new era of transparency and efficiency in advertising," said Lex Josephs, vice president and general manager of Sam's Club Member Access Platform. "Now, because of our unique knowledge of our members, we’re able to offer true closed-loop attribution for both online and offline sales. This gives advertisers unmatched visibility into the results of their search and sponsored product campaigns at a time when they need to make fewer resources go further."

Sam’s Club MAP customers are enthusiastic about the integration of in-club sales to search campaign attribution metrics. For instance, Georgia Pacific, a Sam’s Club supplier and advertiser on the MAP platform, is using in-club attribution to drive greater value from its campaigns.

“With hybrid shopping as the new norm, consumers’ increasing use of search to plan for shopping in brick-and-mortar locations will enable us to seamlessly integrate physical trips and online shopping experiences. This integration allows us to power digitally enabled sales in-club, which is a game changer,” said Paras Shah, director of omnichannel shopper marketing at Georgia Pacific.

“There’s a huge group of our members who see a search ad online or on their phone when shopping but purchase the product in-club. Previously, it was not possible for our advertisers to connect the in-club purchase to their online ads to know what drove sales,” said Tim Simmons, senior vice president and chief product officer, Sam’s Club. “With our new attribution model, advertisers can understand what’s motivating purchases across all channels accurately, especially for search ads.”

In-club attribution is available now for all Sam’s Club advertisers who have live sponsored products campaigns.

About Sam’s Club

Sam’s Club®, a division of Walmart Inc. (NYSE: WMT), is a leading membership warehouse club offering superior products, savings and services to millions of members in nearly 600 clubs in the U.S. and Puerto Rico. Now in its 39^th year, Sam’s Club continues to redefine warehouse shopping with its highly curated assortment of high-quality fresh food and Member’s Mark items, in addition to market-leading technologies and services like Scan & Go, Curbside Pickup and home delivery service in select markets.

To learn more about Sam's Club, visit the Sam's Club Newsroom, shop at SamsClub.com and interact with Sam's Club on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok.

About Sam’s Club Member Access Platform

At Sam’s Club, we are member obsessed. We lead with this obsession by offering a curated assortment of high-quality products at an incredible value. We lead with this obsession by providing our members with a multi-touchpoint experience, whether they are shopping our Clubs, on SamsClub.com, in-app, or with Curbside Pickup and Delivery. We lead with this obsession every day.

We know our members want a shopping experience that is easy, convenient, and personalized. And we know that our agencies, ad tech platforms, suppliers and marketers want to reach our members efficiently and effectively. With Sam’s Club Member Access Platform (MAP), our journey starts with our members. Next, we create and give partners experiences, tools and opportunities that help members discover new products at the time they need and want them.

MAP’s mission is to provide the most valuable and additive ads experience to our members. It's our member-first approach that differentiates us, along with the combination of our platform, our products, our people, our processes and our first-party data.