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A retail media network is a retailer's own advertising business — Amazon Ads, Walmart Connect, Target's Roundel — built on that retailer's first-party shopper data. Since 2026, all three have started folding creator content into that inventory in different ways: Amazon auto-enrolled ad campaigns into creator placements, Walmart runs a separate creator affiliate platform, and Target activates LTK creators as a managed ad product. None of the three sells into Denmark today.
A retail media network is a retailer's own advertising business, sold on top of the shopper data the retailer already owns — Amazon Ads, Walmart Connect and Target's Roundel are the three largest. Historically, the inventory those networks sold was brand-made: product images, banners, search placements. What changed through 2026 is that all three retailers began treating creator-made content as a distinct, separately monetisable layer of that same inventory.
That is a different mechanism from a brand licensing a creator's own video to run as a Meta or TikTok ad — see how to turn influencer content into Meta ads for that workflow. Here, the retailer itself sits between the creator and the ad inventory, and in Amazon's case a brand's existing campaign can be enrolled into creator placements without the brand ever briefing or even selecting the creator directly.
Amazon runs three distinct ways creator content reaches paid or semi-paid inventory. They are easy to confuse because Amazon itself uses overlapping names for them.
Creator Connections is a self-service tool inside the Amazon Ads console (Brand Content → Creator Connections) that lets a seller or vendor offer a bonus commission, on top of standard Amazon Influencer Program rates, to creators who feature a specific product. The brand sets the eligible products, campaign dates, bonus commission and a budget; eligible creators opt in and publish shoppable videos, curated lists or product demos; Amazon handles tracking and payout. It launched in October 2023 and remains commission-only — a brand pays nothing unless a qualifying sale happens. Reported minimum budgets and commission floors vary across secondary sources ($5,000–$15,000 budgets, ~10% minimum commission are both cited); none of that rate card is published by Amazon itself, so treat any specific figure as unconfirmed.
Separately, Amazon Influencer Program members can opt their existing storefront content into Amazon's own social-media advertising placements, earning an onsite commission when a click leads to a qualifying purchase. This is described on Amazon's own creator-facing pages as available in the US, Canada, UK, Germany, France, Spain and Italy. It requires no brand involvement to set up — the creator opts their own content in.
The newest and most consequential mechanism needs no opt-in from either side. Amazon Ads updated its support article "Understand Sponsored Products off-Amazon advertising" on 4 August 2026, and from 10 August 2026 every eligible, already-running Sponsored Products campaign was automatically enrolled into a new placement type: the ad can now appear inside a creator's reviews, editorial content or buying guides, off Amazon, billed on the campaign's existing cost-per-click bid and drawing on its existing budget. Amazon recommends products to creators it judges aligned with the brand; the creator chooses which recommendations to feature; the advertiser's only controls are a campaign-level choice between "Increase reach" (the default) and "Limit off-Amazon spend", plus the ability to exclude specific named creators. No full account-level opt-out has been published. The change covers Brazil, Canada, India, Mexico, the US, the Middle East, North Africa, Turkey and a group of EU countries; the UK and Thailand are explicitly excluded. Amazon's own reporting elsewhere describes its wider Creator Program as already including 500,000+ creators globally.
The practical effect: a brand that has never run a single creator collaboration can still have its Sponsored Products ad appear as if endorsed inside a creator's content, without having chosen that creator, briefed them, or agreed usage rights with them — because the ad itself, not licensed creator footage, is what's being placed.
Walmart keeps its creator platform and its ad network organisationally and technically separate — more separate than Amazon's three mechanisms above.
Walmart Creator (creator.walmart.com), launched October 2022 per Walmart's own announcement, is a self-serve affiliate platform: creators generate trackable product links, share them on their own social channels, and earn commission on resulting sales with no stated cap. Walmart's own marketing copy states no follower minimum is required; some third-party summaries of the program's terms cite a 1,000-follower threshold, and the full per-category commission table sits behind a login, so neither figure should be treated as independently confirmed.
Walmart Connect is the separate, self-serve retail media network: Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands, Sponsored Videos and Onsite Display, sold against Walmart's first-party data from over 150 million weekly customers and running across walmart.com, the Walmart app and in-store screens. Walmart's own product pages for these formats describe brand-supplied creative, not a creator-content pipeline.
Walmart Connect has begun piloting advertising partnerships with TikTok and Snap — in TikTok's case, in-feed ads using Walmart Connect's own targeting and measurement layered on top of TikTok's ad format. That is a media-buying integration, not a repurposing of Walmart Creator content, but it is the clearest signal so far that Walmart intends its retail data and social/creator platforms to converge, the same direction Amazon and Target are already further along.
Target is the only one of the three that has built a named, public bridge from organic creator content straight into its paid retail media product.
In May 2026, Target launched two creator programs, per its own corporate newsroom: Club Target, a gamified programme for everyday creators with weekly challenges and tiered rewards, and Target Ambassadors, powered by LTK, a multi-tiered programme for established creators offering enhanced commission rates and deeper brand access.
Roundel is Target's retail media network (Target Product Ads, search, display, CTV and social, including influencer marketing, on and off Target.com). Its "Influencers by Roundel" product is a managed-service offering: Roundel selects creators through LTK, its named influencer network partner, and manages co-branded content across Instagram, TikTok and Pinterest on a brand's behalf. Roundel's own site states this content achieves 7x higher average Instagram engagement and 2.8x higher average TikTok engagement versus industry benchmarks — that is Roundel's own published claim, not an independently audited figure, and should be read as such.
Target's own materials describe Club Target and Target Ambassadors as feeding the earned/organic side of the funnel, with Roundel providing the paid activation layer on top — the most explicit stated organic-to-paid creator pipeline of the three retailers covered here.
| Amazon | Walmart | Target | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Creator platform | Amazon Influencer Program + Creator Connections + Creator Ads | Walmart Creator (creator.walmart.com) | Club Target + Target Ambassadors (via LTK) |
| Ad network | Amazon Ads (Sponsored Products, DSP, etc.) | Walmart Connect | Roundel |
| How creator content enters paid inventory | Brand-initiated bounty (Creator Connections); creator-initiated storefront ads (Creator Ads); automatic, opt-out-only enrollment of existing campaigns (Aug 2026 change) | Not yet a direct pipeline — the two remain separate businesses; early ad-platform pilots (TikTok, Snap) exist | Managed service: Roundel buys access to LTK creators directly on a brand's behalf |
| Does a brand choose the creator? | Only via Creator Connections; not via the Aug 2026 auto-enrollment | N/A — no direct pipeline yet | Yes — Roundel manages the match |
| Live in Denmark? | No — no Danish Amazon marketplace; reaches Danish shoppers only via amazon.de | No — Walmart does not operate in Denmark | No — Target does not operate outside the US |
IF you already sell on amazon.de or another Amazon European marketplace → check your Sponsored Products campaign settings for the "Increase reach" vs "Limit off-Amazon spend" toggle; your existing budget may already be serving in creator placements you didn't choose.
IF you sell only through your own Danish webshop and none of these three marketplaces → none of this changes your day-to-day tracking or budget today, but it signals where retail media is heading: retailers increasingly see creator content as inventory they control, not just something a brand licenses separately. Watch for a similar move from any Nordic or EU retail media network you do use.
IF you're deciding whether to license a creator's content for retail-media use elsewhere → that's a Meta/TikTok ad-rights question, not a retail-media-network question — see creator whitelisting, Spark Ads and Partnership Ads explained for the closest equivalent mechanics.
The percentage below is a hypothetical assumption used only to illustrate the mechanism — Amazon has not published how much of a typical campaign's budget or clicks shift to creator placements.
A US seller runs a Sponsored Products campaign with a $100 daily budget and a $0.50 cost-per-click bid, left on the default "Increase reach" setting. At full spend, that's 200 clicks a day. If, hypothetically, 15% of those clicks are now served inside creator content rather than on-Amazon search and product pages, that's 30 clicks and $15 of the daily budget diverted to creator placements — leaving $85 for on-Amazon placements that previously had the full $100. The seller's total spend and CPC bid haven't changed; the split of where that spend lands has, and the only way to see it is to check the campaign's placement report.
Make Influence doesn't operate on Amazon, Walmart or Target's retail media networks — none of the three currently sell into Denmark, and our own model runs on curated, briefed creator relationships rather than a retailer-run ad exchange. What we take from watching these three networks in 2026 is a structural signal worth tracking even without direct exposure to them: retailers are starting to treat creator content as ad inventory they can insert into a brand's existing spend, sometimes without the brand choosing the creator at all. If a Danish or Nordic retail media network moves the same direction, the questions worth asking on day one are the ones this article raises — who gets to choose the creator, where does the budget actually land, and can you opt out.
No. Amazon DSP is Amazon's separate programmatic buying layer for display and video, on and off Amazon. The mechanisms in this article — Creator Connections, Creator Ads and the August 2026 change — all run through Sponsored Products and Amazon's dedicated creator programs, not through DSP.
Not at the account level, as of this writing. The available controls are the campaign-level "Increase reach" vs "Limit off-Amazon spend" setting and excluding specific named creators — Amazon has not published a full opt-out.
Not based on Walmart's own published product pages for Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands, Sponsored Videos or Onsite Display, which describe brand-supplied creative. Walmart Creator and Walmart Connect remain separate businesses today.
No. Amazon has no Danish marketplace (Danish shoppers use amazon.de); Walmart does not operate in Denmark; Target operates only in the US.
It's Roundel's own published figure, not an independently audited one — treat it as a retailer's own marketing claim, not a third-party benchmark.
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