Built From
Scratch.
200 Stores
to 1,100+.

Launching a new brand on Walmart advertising is fundamentally different from taking over an existing account. There’s no search term history to mine. No keyword bids to optimize from. No campaign performance data to diagnose. You’re not fixing something — you’re building something, and every early dollar of ad spend is simultaneously generating revenue and gathering intelligence for the next decision.

The frozen snack category on Walmart is competitive, crowded, and unforgiving of slow execution. Established brands defend their placements aggressively. New entrants either establish velocity quickly — proving to Walmart’s algorithm and buyers that the product moves — or they get buried. Velocity is survival in the early weeks of a Walmart launch.

The additional challenge: Mad Genius is a 1P brand. Walmart buys inventory wholesale and controls shelf allocation. The advertising had to do more than generate clicks — it had to generate enough product movement to signal to Walmart’s buyers that Mad Genius deserved more shelf space. Every ad impression was an argument for a store count expansion.

The architecture we built for Mad Genius follows a principle we’ve tested across every Walmart CPG brand we manage: auto campaigns first, because Walmart rewards them with more placement types. Manual campaigns come next — not to replace auto, but to defend branded terms and scale what the data confirms is working. And once the foundation is proven, you expand into every available format simultaneously.

The goal was never to run efficient campaigns. It was to dominate every placement type available — Search In-Grid, Item Carousel, Buy Box, Sponsored Video, Search Brand Amplifier — so that wherever a Walmart shopper was browsing in the frozen section, Mad Genius was visible. Not competing. Dominating.

When Mad Genius provided their Sponsored Brand Video creative, it was a single asset covering the whole brand. We ran it. It worked. And then we pushed.

“Split it into four product-specific videos.” One for Cheeseburger Quesadillas. One for Korean BBQ. One for Bacon Mac & Cheese Snack Rolls. One for Tso’s Empanadas. The Mad Genius team were immediately on board — in hindsight, it was obvious. But obvious things often don’t happen unless someone is thinking about growth at the product level, not just the account level.

The result: four separate Sponsored Video campaigns, each targeting the highest-intent keywords for that specific product. The conversion signal for each SKU became cleaner. The impression share on video placements expanded. And the overall account breadth went from a brand with ads to a brand with a presence.

This is the Clickstera difference — we don’t just manage what exists. We think about what should exist, and we build it. Strategy isn’t a report; it’s a conversation about when to go aggressive, when to defend, when to add formats, and when to hold.

In Walmart’s 1P model, store count expansion isn’t automatic. National buyers review velocity data — how fast products move through stores — and make decisions about distribution based on what the numbers show. Advertising accelerates velocity. Velocity earns shelf space.

Within the first five weeks of launch, the campaign data told a compelling story: impressions had grown 4× with stable ROAS. Weekly units ordered had grown nearly 5×. CVR was above 25% — roughly five times the food/beverage category average on Walmart. When FoodStory Brands’ Co-Founder and CMO, Jay Whitney, needed to brief their national Walmart buyer on the program’s performance, he came to us for the numbers.