Walmart, Meredith team to aid shoppers with meal planning
Walmart is partnering with a new media company to aid its grocery e-commerce operation that includes ways of getting own brand product out in front of shoppers via new shoppable ad experiences.
The retailer is working with Meredith Corp., a leading multi-platform media company to bring AI-powered content and data to the retailer's food shopping experience. The partnership pairs Meredith’s expertise in food content, hyper-local consumer insights and a proprietary technology platform with Walmart’s wide customer reach, deep product assortment (including private label), convenient shopping experience and delivery. The move comes as Walmart recently announced plans to expand its supply chain across the country.
Meredith predicts that views of “Meal Plans” and related articles and plans will be up 30% across its sites in 2021 versus last year. Through new shoppable ad experiences, Walmart shoppers will be able to meal plan and add recipe ingredients to their carts, often featuring Walmart's private brand products.
“This wide-ranging partnership with Walmart includes first-party data-driven ‘Make It Easy’ and ‘Kid Foodology’ programs, which reimagine the shopping experience with highly personalized content and ad experiences that deliver unparalleled value every step of the way,” said Corbin de Rubertis, senior vice president of Innovation at Meredith. “As children go back to school, parents return to the office and the fall season takes shape, Meredith and Walmart will help families prepare meals they’ll love and get them on the table faster.”
The partnership between Meredith and Walmart will feature several custom, proprietary tools and content designed to assist customers in creating new recipes. Meredith’s industry-leading content taxonomy and predictive insights, including concept demand curves and consumer decision frameworks, alongside Walmart’s API technology, match millions of products with consumers in real-time at scale. Visual search technology will enable shoppers to take photos of ingredients they have on hand and receive meal suggestions that incorporate those ingredients.
Walmart will release a shoppable bookazine filled with editor-curated recipes with “Allrecipes 30 Minute Meals.” Available for sale in September exclusively at Walmart stores, the bookazine will provide another opportunity to bring the shoppable experience to life for consumers, increasing awareness and adoption of the shoppable tools and making their daily lives easier.
A voice-activated experience through Allrecipes Action for Google Assistant is available for shoppers. Saying “Hey Google, talk to Allrecipes” and searching for a recipe by ingredient, keyword or dish name will give a personalized suggestion for a complete meal solution available at Walmart for pickup and delivery.
Finally, Meredith and Walmart have also launched a social commerce promotion, in which popular videos from Allrecipes become shoppable via Walmart with ads on TikTok. Consumers simply tap the “Shop Now” call-to-action button in the TikTok video to load all of the ingredients into a digital shopping cart on Walmart.