Walmart, Sparky, and Marty: How Creative Intelligence Is the Key to Winning Retail Media

Retail media has grown up.

What started as a performance-focused channel built around sponsored listings and last-click attribution has become one of the most important battlegrounds in modern advertising. Global retail media spend is now estimated at more than $165 billion, and that number keeps climbing.

But something fundamental has changed.

Winning in retail media is no longer about who bids the most or who owns the most placements. It is about who understands creative performance at a deeper level, and who uses AI-driven insights to act on it before money is spent.

This is where creative intelligence enters the picture.

Retail Media Is No Longer Just a Buying Problem

Retail media once followed a familiar formula. Brands optimized keywords, tweaked bids, and chased efficiency. Creative was often treated as a requirement, not a lever.

That approach no longer works.

Retail platforms have matured. Shopper expectations have shifted. And AI is now embedded across the retail media stack, from targeting to measurement to creative generation itself.

Walmart and Amazon are not simply ad marketplaces anymore. They are building full-stack AI systems designed to influence how ads are created, delivered, and evaluated.

For brands, this changes the rules.

Creative quality is no longer subjective. It is measurable. And in retail media environments, it often determines whether an ad converts or disappears.

Context Is the New King in Retail Media Creative

Retail media ads do not live in feeds designed for discovery or entertainment. They live inside moments of intent.

They appear:

• Between search results
• Inside product carousels
• Adjacent to pricing, reviews, and buy buttons

This context creates pressure.

Unlike social or video platforms, you often do not get multiple chances to reframe your message. If the creative does not align with the moment, the shopper moves on.

That is why retail media creative must do three things immediately:

1. Fit the context it appears in
2. Deliver value without explanation
3. Guide the shopper clearly toward action

This is not about being louder or more emotional. It is about being precise.

Brands that treat retail media creative like a resized social asset often pay for it in wasted impressions.

Agentic AI Is Redefining Retail Media Competition

The next phase of retail media is being shaped by agentic AI.

According to reporting from Digiday, Walmart is rolling out a new generation of agentic AI tools that go well beyond bidding and targeting. Two of the most notable are Marty, an advertising assistant designed to support campaign setup, optimization, and creative insights, and Sparky, Walmart’s AI shopping assistant where sponsored ads are now being integrated directly into conversational shopping experiences.

Ads are also being integrated directly into Walmart’s AI shopping assistant, allowing sponsored messages to appear inside conversational shopping flows.

Amazon has been moving in this direction for longer. Its AI systems already support campaign creation, copy generation, targeting recommendations, and performance analysis.

The takeaway is simple.

Retail media platforms are no longer neutral pipes. They are intelligent systems that reward creative signals they understand and can optimize against.

This raises the bar for advertisers.

Creative performance is becoming a primary input, not an afterthought.

Source: Digiday reporting on Walmart Connect’s agentic AI strategy

Why Creative Performance Now Drives Retail Media Outcomes

AI-driven retail media platforms rely on signals.

They evaluate:

• Engagement patterns
• Visual and audio cues
• Message clarity
• Contextual alignment

Creative that performs well generates cleaner signals. Cleaner signals improve delivery. Improved delivery drives efficiency.

Poor creative does the opposite.

This creates a compounding effect. When creative underperforms, no amount of bidding or targeting can fully compensate. When creative performs, it amplifies every other part of the media strategy.

This is why creative intelligence matters more than optimization after launch.

Brands that understand creative performance before spend goes live reduce risk. Brands that do not are effectively learning on paid impressions.

What Creative Intelligence Looks Like in Practice

Creative intelligence is not about opinions or best practices. It is about evidence.

A clear example comes from a campaign analysis for The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power on Prime Video.

In this campaign:

• 41 multilingual creatives were analyzed
• 61 creative attributes were identified
• The campaign delivered more than 4.9 million player views

AI was used to isolate which creative elements actually drove engagement.

The results were clear.

Specific visual elements including fire, rings, oceans, and trees drove a 68 percent increase in engagement.

A single audio line, “Sauron needs not armies, but rings. Fight with me.” delivered an 83 percent lift in engagement.

This was not discovered through manual review or post-campaign guesswork. It was identified through structured creative analysis before optimization decisions were made.

That distinction matters.

When brands understand which creative elements trigger emotional and cultural resonance, they stop relying on assumptions and start making informed creative decisions.

From Guesswork to Precision With Pre-Campaign Testing

Retail media has traditionally favored reactive optimization. Brands launch, observe, and adjust.

Creative intelligence flips that model.

Pre-campaign creative testing allows brands to:

• Identify high-performing attributes before launch
• Eliminate low-performing creative early
• Adapt messaging to retail-specific contexts

Synthetic audiences make this possible at scale. Instead of waiting for live performance data, brands can simulate response patterns and predict engagement drivers before budget is committed.

This approach does not replace optimization. It makes optimization smarter.

When creative enters retail media environments already aligned with shopper intent and platform signals, every dollar works harder.

Why Creative Intelligence Scales Beyond Retail Media

Although retail media is the focus, the implications extend further.

The same creative intelligence framework applies to:

• CTV and streaming environments
• Ecommerce display and onsite placements
• Performance video and hybrid formats

As platforms rely more heavily on AI-driven delivery, creative signals matter everywhere.

Brands that build creative intelligence into their workflow create consistency across channels without sacrificing performance nuance.

The Takeaway for Brands Competing in an AI-Driven Market

You do not need to build your own AI shopping assistant to compete with Walmart or Amazon.

But you do need visibility into what your creative is doing.

That means:

• Understanding which creative elements drive engagement
• Testing before spending, not after
• Treating creative performance as a measurable input

The retail media arms race is not just about technology. It is about intelligence.

Brands that invest in creative intelligence will spend more efficiently, adapt faster, and outperform competitors still relying on instinct and iteration.

Retail media has entered its creative era. The brands that recognize that shift early will define what winning looks like next.