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

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.

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

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.