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September 2025
Walmart Baby Month is one of the most competitive moments of the year, especially in the car seat category where aggressive pricing, high SKU density, and nonstop promotions dominate. Safety 1st needed to win visibility for Grow & Go car seats while maintaining efficiency in an environment where competitors were flooding the auction with spend.
BTR Media shifted incremental investment into Walmart DSS to complement search and relieve auction pressure during Baby Month. Rather than chasing visibility through brute-force spend, the strategy focused on placing Safety 1st alongside relevant Baby and car seat content, preserving efficiency while maintaining presence during high-intent shopping moments.
Budgets and SKU coverage were intentionally controlled to protect conversion rate and ROAS, with in-flight optimization driven by real-time performance signals. This approach allowed Safety 1st to scale what was working while quickly pulling back from lower-quality traffic as category pressure intensified.
Used DSS as a mid-funnel efficiency lever to offset inflated search auctions during Baby Month.
Prioritized category-relevant environments to stay visible without relying solely on keyword competition.
Focused on core Grow & Go SKUs and actively managed pacing to balance scale and efficiency.
The strategy delivered strong performance during one of Walmart’s most competitive seasonal moments. Conversion rate increased double-digits month over month, and ROAS improved versus prior DSS efforts while maintaining scale in a heavily promotional environment.
Keyword-based DSS tactics emerged as the top performer, delivering a $42.54 ROAS, significantly outperforming contextual, broad reach, and audience-based approaches. The campaign also drove meaningful incrementality, with 69% of buyers classified as new, reaching 90.9K total buyers and confirming DSS as an effective lever for seasonal customer acquisition.
"Sage did a phenomenal job helping us launch our DSS campaign to highlight a rollback during a critical tentpole moment at Walmart. Sage and the BTR team communicated results promptly and made suggestions to optimize to make sure we had the highest return."
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