Walmart Connect Is Rolling Out an AI Assistant for Sponsored Search, Called Marty
Walmart's "super agent" Marty, introduced in 2025, is now in beta inside the Sponsored Search console: a chat assistant for bidding, keywords, billing and four research reports, headed to every Sponsored Search advertiser this half.
By Serhii Khyshchenko, Team Lead (external traffic), UNITIX Agency
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Walmart Connect has started enabling Sponsored Search advertisers for the beta of Marty, an AI assistant built directly into the Ad Center. The notice goes out account by account rather than all at once, which is itself worth noting: as of this beta, some advertisers have it inside their console and most don't yet. The rollout and every figure below come from Walmart Connect's own 6 January 2026 announcement, written by Khurrum Malik, its Vice President of Business & Product Marketing.
What Marty actually does
Inside the Sponsored Search console, Marty answers questions in plain language about bidding, keywords and billing, and surfaces alerts and recommendations without being asked. On request, it can also pull four specific research reports through chat: change analysis, account impression share of voice, account keyword impression share of voice, and account category benchmark opportunity. Walmart's own framing is a conversational layer over account management and reporting, closer to answering a question than running a campaign unattended.
Marty's own interface, as Walmart Connect illustrates it to advertisers. Image: Walmart Connect.
The number worth noticing: 97%
Walmart Connect's own engagement figure is that 97% of Marty queries are unique, meaning almost nobody is asking it the same handful of stock questions. That's the kind of number a platform publishes to argue genuine, varied use rather than a handful of canned prompts getting repeated, and it's Walmart's own reporting, not an outside measurement.
Rollout: beta now, everyone later this half
Marty isn't brand new. Walmart introduced it in July 2025 as a broader "super agent" effort, and this Sponsored Search beta is a specific application of that inside the ad console. Walmart's own words on timing: it will reach "all Sponsored Search advertisers in the Walmart Connect Ad Center later this half, with more enhanced capabilities and insights rolling out along the way." That's a real commitment with a vague clock attached. Walmart didn't publish a calendar date, so an advertiser without it today has no published date to watch for beyond "this half."
The same season brought more AI to the rest of Walmart Connect
Marty wasn't the only thing in that announcement. Sparky, Walmart's customer-facing shopping agent on walmart.com, gets its own figure: an August 2025 survey where 81% of customers reported using it to check product availability and review specifications before buying. On the creative side, Walmart's Automated Creative Generator reports an 80% reduction in production time from its beta testing data (August to October 2025), and an Automated Brand Shop Builder uses generative AI to produce ad creative with lifestyle backgrounds. GenAI-powered performance insights, including end-of-campaign and path-to-conversion reports, are stated as coming in Walmart's next fiscal year.
It's the same kind of move Amazon made the same season, wrapping ad management in a conversational AI layer: Amazon renamed its own ad platform Amazon Ads Agent at unBoxed 2026 and built two new campaign types around the same idea. Different marketplace, same instinct: fewer dashboards, more questions answered in chat.
What this means for a seller running Walmart Connect
UNITIX's take
An assistant that answers questions and flags alerts faster is a genuine time saver, and it's worth using the moment it lands in your account. It is not a reason to stop checking the account yourself: Walmart's own description is recommendations and answers, not a campaign manager making decisions unsupervised, and a platform's own assistant has no reason to tell you when its recommendation isn't the right call for your margin. That judgment is exactly what our Walmart advertising work adds on top of whatever Walmart ships next.
Walmart Connect and Amazon Ads keep diverging on the details even as both chase the same AI-assistant idea. If you're weighing time and budget between the two platforms, the ten concrete differences we measured directly in both consoles are in Walmart vs Amazon.
Common questions
What is Marty, Walmart Connect's advertising assistant?
A conversational AI assistant built into the Walmart Connect Ad Center. It answers questions about bidding, keywords and billing, surfaces personalized alerts and recommendations, and can pull four research reports on request: change analysis, account impression share of voice, account keyword impression share of voice, and account category benchmark opportunity. It's currently in beta for Sponsored Search campaigns.
Is Marty available to every Walmart advertiser right now?
Not yet. It's in beta, rolling out to advertisers one account at a time rather than all at once; Walmart's own wording is that it becomes available to every Sponsored Search advertiser in the Ad Center "later this half," with more capability added as it goes. An account being enabled for the beta is not the same as every account having it today.
What exactly can Marty do today?
Per Walmart Connect's own description: answer questions about an account in plain language, surface alerts and recommendations, help build and troubleshoot campaigns, and generate four specific research reports through chat rather than a report builder. Walmart has not published a list of campaign actions Marty can take on its own versus actions it only recommends.
Is Marty the same thing as Sparky?
No. Sparky is Walmart's AI shopping agent, facing customers on walmart.com; Walmart cites an August 2025 survey where 81% of customers reported using it to check product availability and review specifications before buying. Marty is a separate tool facing advertisers, inside Walmart Connect. They're both built on the same "super agent" effort Walmart introduced in July 2025, but one talks to shoppers and the other talks to advertisers.
Does using Marty cost anything beyond normal Sponsored Search spend?
Walmart hasn't published a separate price for it. The rollout pattern described, enabling it inside the Ad Center accounts advertisers already have, reads as a feature added to existing Sponsored Search access rather than a paid add-on, but that's a reading of the rollout, not a price Walmart has stated outright.
Published by UNITIX Agency, an Amazon growth agency and an Amazon Ads Verified Partner. More at unitix.pro/insights.
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