Walmart Is Testing On-Site Creator Videos: What It Is, What It Is Not, and Why It Matters

Walmart just announced that it is testing on-site placements for creator videos. If you are an Amazon influencer or affiliate, that is a big deal, and I woke up to a lot of excited messages about it. But I want to pump the brakes for a minute, because I think a lot of creators have visions of grandeur about what this is going to be. The idea that you are going to take every video on your Amazon storefront and move it over to Walmart is not how this is going to work. The system sounds the same on paper. In practice it is a very different ecosystem, and I want to walk you through exactly what it is and what it is not.

What Walmart Actually Announced

The announcement went out by email to a very small group of creators. The message was simple: Walmart is testing creator videos on product pages. That is the piece that matters. Up until now, Walmart creator content lived on your Walmart storefront and nowhere else. It did not show up on the product detail page where shoppers actually make buying decisions, which is exactly where Amazon influencer videos get their on-site commissions.

So this is a test, not a rollout. We do not know the commission structure. We do not know when or if it goes wide. What we do know is that a giant retailer is experimenting with the exact model that built the Amazon Influencer Program, and that alone is worth paying attention to.

Walmart Has Had a Creator Program for Years

A lot of Amazon influencers did not realize Walmart already has a creator program. You sign up, you get a storefront, and you upload videos and pictures tied to products. The difference until now has been placement. Your content sat on your own storefront page instead of on the product pages, so the discovery and conversion dynamics were nothing like Amazon’s on-site carousel.

This matters because the infrastructure already exists. Walmart is not building a creator program from scratch. They are adding on-site distribution to a program that has been quietly running for a while, which means if the test goes well, the path to a wider rollout is a lot shorter than people think.

Getting Approved Is Not Guaranteed

Here is something I do not have a lot of clarity on: how Walmart decides who gets in. When I applied a couple of years ago, I used my main Walmart customer account. That account is about ten years old with a ton of transaction history. I got declined, and I have no idea why. So I turned around and applied with a different email address, and I honestly do not remember changing anything else. That one got approved.

I have heard from several other creators who were declined on their first try too. So do not be surprised if there are a few hoops to jump through. If you get rejected, try again. The approval process seems inconsistent enough that a second application is worth the five minutes it takes.

Why Walmart Is a Real Threat to Amazon

Walmart has been making massive strides toward knocking Amazon off the hill. There are areas where Walmart is already beating Amazon, like the way they structure their off-site ads, and they are generating serious revenue from it. Consumer perception around ordering from Walmart online has changed dramatically over the last couple of years. Their delivery program is excellent, with same-day shipping on a lot of items, and the traffic on Walmart.com reflects that.

Put that together and you have a massive opportunity if on-site video goes through. The unknown is commission rates. We have no idea what those are going to look like yet. But traffic plus on-site placement plus any reasonable commission rate is the formula that made the Amazon Influencer Program work, and Walmart has two of the three pieces already.

The Three Rules That Change Everything

Now for the part that most creators are glossing over. Walmart’s video rules are different from Amazon’s, and they rule out the majority of what is sitting on your storefront right now.

Under 60 seconds. Right there, most of your Amazon storefront videos are disqualified. A lot of us shoot 90-second to three-minute reviews because that is what performs on Amazon.
Under 150 MB. No 4K or 8K uploads. You will likely need to compress or re-export files to get under the limit.
Vertical only. This is the big one. Walmart wants vertical video, period. If you shoot horizontal for Amazon, that footage does not transfer.

Short, vertical, lightweight. It feels very TikTok. I am not sure a TikTok-style video is what a Walmart shopper wants to see on a product page, and we will find out if that is really where it lands. But those are the rules in the test, and they make this a fundamentally different content ecosystem from your Amazon storefront.

Why You Cannot Just Automate This

The second thing people are missing is tagging. When you cross-post Amazon content to YouTube or Pinterest, you are using Amazon links. The product identity travels with the video. Walmart does not work that way. Walmart uses its own catalog, generally keyed on UPC codes, not Amazon ASINs. There is no clean mapping from the product you tagged on Amazon to the product on Walmart.

That means a fully automated pipeline that takes your 60-second vertical videos, moves them to Walmart, and tags them is close to impossible right now. The upload step can be automated to a degree. The tagging step cannot. You have to find out whether the product is even sold on Walmart, then locate it in their catalog and tag it manually. I have been playing with this all week. It is not as hard as it sounds, but it is nothing like the one-click cross-posting you are used to.

What I Am Doing About It

My recommendation is simple: go sign up now. Search for the Walmart creator program, get your account approved, and get your storefront set up. Even though this is in beta, it would have to go really badly for Walmart to not roll it out in some form. I think it is far more likely that it goes wide than that it disappears, and you want to be in the door before that happens.

I am already building Walmart functionality into Oink because of this. It only makes sense. I also plan to shoot a second, short vertical cut specifically for Walmart whenever I am filming a product for Amazon. I am already there with the product in my hands. Why would I not? The whole point is to build up storefronts on multiple platforms so you get more visibility and stop keeping all your eggs in Amazon’s basket.

The Pressure This Puts on Amazon

Here is the part I find most interesting. If Walmart’s commission rates come in higher than Amazon’s, that creates real competitive pressure. Right now Amazon has no competition for on-site creator video. If Walmart launches a program that pays creators better and works more smoothly, that is a direct shot at Amazon, and Amazon will have to respond. For creators, that competition is only a good thing.

So treat this as what it is: an early signal with real upside. Sign up, start experimenting with a few short vertical videos, and do not burn your whole week trying to migrate your backlog. The tools for this are coming, and I am building them.

If you want to be ready the moment Walmart on-site video goes live, grab Oink for Influencers. The Walmart cross-posting tools are already rolling out to Pro subscribers, and the same product research and storefront management features that help you win on Amazon are going to matter just as much on the next platform.