Friday 22nd August | Join Free
Hello, this is your Beyond the Basket daily brief.
In today’s beyond the basket:
📦 Walmart ecommerce sales surge 26% on grocery strength
🎄 Meta rolls out AI ad tools ahead of holidays
🚗 Hertz to sell used cars on Amazon Autos
🛒 Co-op adds “tap to join” membership via electronic shelf labels
+plus three deep reads and two tools that could increase your average order value, and let you see what your competitors are up to in the online ads space.
📦 Walmart ecommerce sales surge 26% on grocery strength LINK
TL;DR: Walmart’s U.S. ecommerce sales rose 26% in Q2, led by grocery demand and a 50% increase in store-fulfilled delivery, prompting the retailer to raise its full-year sales outlook despite tariff pressures.
Why It Matters: Walmart is leveraging its grocery dominance to fuel digital scale. Grocery’s shift online, especially via store-based fulfilment, is locking customers into Walmart’s ecosystem, while new growth engines (advertising, memberships, and AI tools) are reshaping margins. Membership income grew 15%, Walmart Connect advertising rose 31% in the U.S., and its marketplace expanded 17% globally. This diversification helps cushion margin pressures from tariffs while positioning Walmart as a hybrid retailer–media–tech platform. AI also looms large, with the rollout of Sparky, Walmart’s digital assistant, designed to power personalised shopping and reorder flows. The takeaway: Walmart is quietly becoming a platform company, not just a retailer.
Your Move: Identify your own “grocery equivalent”, the products customers buy most frequently. Build loyalty around those with subscriptions, personalised rewards, and seamless reordering, then use that habitual engagement as the gateway to higher-margin categories. Walmart’s playbook shows that repeat-purchase essentials are the strongest driver of long-term customer loyalty.
🎄 Meta rolls out AI ad tools ahead of holidays LINK
TL;DR: Meta has launched new AI-powered ad options for the upcoming holiday season, including enhanced creator partnerships, shoppable Reels, omnichannel ads, and email sign-up offers to help brands capture seasonal demand.
Why It Matters: Meta’s updates show how AI and automation are reshaping performance marketing. Instead of marketers manually testing endless variations, Meta wants brands to supply diverse creative inputs, video, creator content, catalogs, and let its algorithms decide what works. The focus on shoppable Reels and creator-led promotions reflects how discovery is shifting toward video and social proof, while omnichannel ads and email capture tools point to Meta’s bigger bet: linking seasonal ad spend to long-term loyalty and first-party data. In short, the holiday push isn’t just about conversions, it’s about feeding Meta’s AI with enough inputs to maximise reach, efficiency, and retention.
Your Move: Don’t fight Meta’s AI, feed it. Enter Q4 with a pipeline of creator-led assets, diversified video formats, and catalog integrations. Use the new email sign-up and omnichannel features to turn seasonal buyers into customers you can reach directly, long after the holidays.
🚗 Hertz to sell used cars on Amazon Autos LINK
TL;DR: Hertz will begin selling its used fleet vehicles directly on Amazon, starting in Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, and Seattle, with plans to expand to 45 markets nationwide.
Why It Matters: This partnership represents a major step for Amazon into automotive retail and a shift in how cars move from fleets to consumers. Traditionally, Hertz sold de-fleeted cars via wholesale auctions to dealerships. By listing directly on Amazon, Hertz cuts out the middle layer, aiming for higher margins and greater control. For Amazon, it’s another category where the “browse to buy” journey is collapsing into its marketplace. If this model scales, it could pressure dealers who rely on off-lease and fleet cars as their most profitable inventory, while also validating Amazon as a channel for big-ticket consumer purchases. The ripple effects could extend beyond cars, signalling how other fleet-heavy industries (appliances, equipment, even consumer electronics) might bypass wholesale channels to go direct.
Your Move: Watch Amazon’s auto playbook as a signal for how quickly consumers will trust ecommerce for big-ticket items. Consider whether your brand has categories that could bypass traditional wholesale routes, and how marketplace partnerships could unlock direct-to-consumer reach at scale, increasing margins in the process.