Walmart 2024: how the world's largest retailer scaled $100 billion in e-commerce, $3 billion in advertising, and a Vizio acquisition into a credible Amazon challenger
Walmart's e-commerce business crossed $100 billion in global revenue during fiscal 2024 (about 18% of total Walmart revenue), with US e-commerce growth of 24% in Q1 FY2025. The company's advertising business, Walmart Connect, reached $3.4 billion in revenue in fiscal 2024 and continues to grow at 27% annually. The February 2024 announcement that Walmart would acquire smart-TV manufacturer Vizio for $2.3 billion was widely interpreted as extending advertising-platform infrastructure beyond Walmart's own properties into Vizio's roughly 18 million SmartCast accounts. Through 2023-2024, Walmart's stock more than doubled, reaching all-time highs and finally narrowing the perceived strategic gap to Amazon. The Walmart 2024 chapter is studied as a case in how legacy retailers compete with Amazon's flywheel by building parallel infrastructure (e-commerce scale, retail media, owned content distribution) rather than trying to replicate Amazon's model.
- Story: Walmart's e-commerce business crossed $100B global revenue in FY2024 (~18% of $648B total). Walmart Connect advertising reached $3.4B (+27% YoY). February 2024 announced Vizio acquisition for $2.3B closed late 2024, adding ~18M SmartCast households to advertising platform. Stock more than doubled 2023-2024. The strategy: build parallel infrastructure (e-commerce + retail media + connected-TV + Walmart+) leveraging Walmart's physical-store advantage, rather than replicating Amazon's flywheel.
- Why it matters: Walmart 2023-2024 is the worked example of competing with Amazon's flywheel by building parallel infrastructure that leverages your own structural advantages rather than trying to replicate the competitor's model.
- Takeaway: Replicating an entrenched competitor's flywheel is usually a losing strategy.
- Takeaway: Build a parallel flywheel that leverages your own structural advantages (Walmart's 4,600+ US stores) and meets the competitor in selected high-value areas.
- Takeaway: Connected-TV + retail-media integration may be the next strategic layer of retail-media competition.
Walmart 2024 strategy — the four-step story
Walmart 2024 strategy at a glance
Quick facts
The post-Bonobos pivot toward platform retail
Walmart's strategic position post-2018 has involved a deliberate retreat from the digital-native-acquisition strategy that produced the Jet.com purchase (2016, $3.3B, written down by 2020) and various smaller deals (Bonobos 2017 $310M, Modcloth 2017, Eloquii 2018, ShoeBuy 2017). The acquisitions had been intended to give Walmart digital-native talent and millennial-aligned brand presence; in practice they had produced operating-loss drag without commensurate competitive position improvement.
Under Doug McMillon's leadership through the late 2010s and into the 2020s, Walmart pivoted toward a platform-retail strategy more focused on operational excellence and parallel-infrastructure building. The strategic frame: Walmart wouldn't try to be Amazon, but it would build the capabilities that allow it to compete with Amazon's flywheel on a structurally similar footing. Key capabilities to build: e-commerce scale, fulfillment infrastructure, retail-media advertising business, subscription program (Walmart+), and distribution into adjacent categories.
The e-commerce growth trajectory
Walmart's e-commerce business reached approximately $100 billion in global revenue during fiscal 2024 (ended January 2024). The trajectory:
- FY2020 e-commerce revenue ~$36B; FY2024 ~$100B — nearly 3x growth in four years.
- US e-commerce specifically grew 24% in Q1 FY2025 (reported May 2024), continued double-digit growth.
- Marketplace component grew faster than first-party: third-party sellers selling on Walmart.com produced increasing share of e-commerce GMV.
- Walmart Fulfillment Services (WFS) built parallel infrastructure to Amazon FBA, providing fulfillment to third-party marketplace sellers.
- Curbside pickup and delivery infrastructure at the store-network level became a differentiated capability vs Amazon's fulfillment-center-only model.
- International e-commerce: Flipkart (India) and Mexican Bodega Aurrera digital businesses contributed; international restructuring (UK Asda sale, Japan Seiyu sale, various other divestitures) focused remaining international footprint on growth markets.
The retail-media advertising business and the Amazon comparison
Walmart Connect (formerly Walmart Media Group) became one of the fastest-growing retail-media businesses globally. The structural logic mirrors Amazon Ads: leverage e-commerce browsing and purchasing data to sell advertising back to the brands that sell products on the platform, plus extend to off-platform inventory through retargeting and audience-extension products.
- FY2024 advertising revenue $3.4B, up 27% YoY.
- Customer-base distinct from Amazon: Walmart's shopper demographics skew slightly lower-income and more grocery-heavy than Amazon's, providing differentiated advertising audience for brands.
- In-store digital signage, search-result ads on Walmart.com, off-platform retargeting built into Walmart Connect's ad inventory mix.
- Connected-TV expansion via Vizio: the planned Vizio acquisition would extend Walmart Connect ad inventory to ~18M SmartCast households' streaming time.
- Comparison to Amazon Ads: Amazon advertising revenue was ~$47B 2023 (~14x Walmart Connect). The relative scale gap is large but Walmart Connect growth rate is faster than Amazon Ads on a relative basis.
The Vizio acquisition and the connected-TV play
Walmart announced on February 20, 2024 that it would acquire Vizio for $2.3 billion ($11.50 per Vizio share). The acquisition cleared regulatory review in November 2024 and closed in early December. The strategic logic:
- Vizio's SmartCast platform reaches ~18 million households with first-party viewing data on what consumers watch on their TVs.
- Combined with Walmart Connect, this creates an integrated retail-and-CTV advertising platform that competes structurally with Amazon's combination of e-commerce browsing data and Prime Video / Twitch streaming inventory.
- Vizio hardware business continues but is essentially the customer-acquisition channel for the more strategically valuable advertising data and inventory.
- Connected-TV ad inventory is growing rapidly as cord-cutting drives more viewing to streaming; Vizio's position as a substantial streaming-platform operator gave Walmart immediate scale.
- Antitrust review was modest: the acquisition is structurally different from horizontal media consolidation and faced fewer regulatory questions than larger TV-related deals (Disney-Fox, AT&T-Time Warner).
- Integration is early-stage: combining Walmart Connect and Vizio Advertising platforms operationally will take 12-24 months.
How RGM thinks about parallel-infrastructure competition with Amazon
Walmart's 2023-2024 strategy is the worked example of competing with Amazon's flywheel by building parallel infrastructure rather than trying to replicate the model. The structural difference: Amazon's flywheel grew up around third-party marketplace + AWS + Prime + advertising. Walmart's flywheel is growing up around physical-store distribution + curbside fulfillment + Walmart+ + Connect advertising + Vizio-connected-TV. The two flywheels overlap in some places (e-commerce, retail media) but diverge in critical infrastructure (physical-store density vs fulfillment centers; smart-TV platform vs cloud).
Our framework for clients in similar competitive situations: when you face an entrenched competitor with a dominant flywheel, replicating the flywheel is usually a losing strategy — the entrenched player has years of compounded advantage. The winning strategy is to build a parallel flywheel that leverages your own structural advantages (Walmart's case: 4,600+ US stores, Sam's Club, grocery-and-essentials customer base) and that meets the competitor's flywheel in selected high-value areas (e-commerce, retail media) without trying to win the whole footprint. Walmart's parallel-infrastructure strategy is multi-decade work and the gap to Amazon remains large; whether it eventually closes will depend on continued execution. But the trajectory through 2023-2024 has been demonstrably positive.
Frequently asked questions
Is Walmart's e-commerce profitable?
Not on a standalone basis. Walmart doesn't break out e-commerce P&L separately, but executive commentary has suggested e-commerce is not yet profitable as a segment. The strategic justification is that e-commerce growth drives total-customer relationships (Walmart+ subscriptions, advertising audience, basket size) that produce profit elsewhere in the system. Whether e-commerce should be profitable on a standalone basis or function as a loss-leader is the strategic question.
What's Walmart+ subscriber count?
Not publicly disclosed. Industry estimates suggest ~25M paying subscribers as of 2024, up from launch in September 2020. Walmart+ has slowly built into a meaningful subscription program but remains substantially smaller than Amazon Prime (estimated ~200M+ globally) and Costco membership (~130M cardholders). The growth trajectory has been positive but the gap to Prime is structurally large.
Will Vizio integration actually deliver?
Early-stage. The structural logic is sound and the antitrust path was easier than initially expected. Operational integration of Walmart Connect's ad-platform and Vizio's CTV inventory will take 12-24 months. Brand customers (CPG, automotive, retail brands) will need to be convinced that the integrated platform is meaningfully more valuable than buying each separately. The acquisition is a real strategic bet rather than guaranteed integration win.
Why has Walmart stock done so well in 2023-2024?
Multiple factors: strong execution on the parallel-infrastructure strategy, continued grocery-segment outperformance (Walmart has gained substantial grocery share through inflation as price-sensitive consumers shifted from Kroger and others), perception that Walmart is finally building credible Amazon alternative, broader investor rotation toward defensive consumer staples. The stock has more than doubled in 2023-2024 reaching all-time highs.
How does Walmart compete with Amazon on prime same-day delivery?
Walmart's structural advantage is that 90% of the US population lives within 10 miles of a Walmart store. Same-day delivery, curbside pickup, and pharmacy-and-essentials access can be served from the store network. Amazon's fulfillment-center network is also dense but doesn't reach into smaller-city and rural geographies where Walmart's store network does. The competitive battle is asymmetric: Walmart competes well in groceries and essentials; Amazon competes better in discretionary general-merchandise and long-tail products.
Sources & references
- Walmart investor relations — SEC filings and quarterly earnings materials.
- Vizio acquisition announcement — Walmart official announcement February 20, 2024.
- Walmart Connect coverage — WSJ coverage of Walmart's advertising business.
- Walmart e-commerce growth coverage — Reuters coverage of e-commerce trajectory.
- Bloomberg parallel-infrastructure analysis — Bloomberg analysis of competitive strategy.