Walmart Connect Mexico has announced a large-scale deployment of AI in-store audience intelligence sensors.

The rollout will span hundreds of Walmart Supercentres, with thousands of sensors measuring and activating in-store retail media campaigns in real time.

Walmart Connect is closed-loop media business of Walmart, America's largest omnichannel retailer.

The move, being carried out in partnership with AI firm Advertime, analyses shoppers in stores to understand audience characteristics, including age group, gender expression, attention span and dwell time.

The information is then fed into Walmart Connect's multimedia platform, aiming to enable more accurate targeting and measurement for digital and static media in stores.

Advetima described the initiative as the largest implementation of audience intelligence ever undertaken globally.

Walmart Connect Mexico stated that the focus of the technology rollout will be on audience measurement in non-digital promotional spaces within stores; digital media within stores, including digital signage; and real-time audience targeting on Direct I/O (Direct Insertion Order) digital media within stores.

Direct I/O is a traditional method of purchasing digital advertising space directly from the publisher, where targeting and delivery are managed manually or semi-manually by the publisher's advertising team.

The implementation aims to provide better attribution between in-store exposure and sales and more accurate audience segments for advertisers, providing a unified level of measurement across digital and physical media.

Wei Pung, global head of market strategy and growth at Advertima, explained in a statement on LinkedIn that the technology will enable anonymous audience segmentation, the integration of digital and non-digital media at the point of sale, and the application of performance metrics to the physical environment.

“For the first time at hypermarket scale, real-time audience measurement and audience-based activation are becoming operational inside the physical store,” he added.

Jonatan Fasano, business development director at Walmart Connect Mexico, said that the move brings in-store media to the same standard as online, with audience targeting, measurable performance, and privacy-first execution.

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