Walmart Is Exploring Bringing Ads to Sparky, Its New AI Shopping Agent (www.wsj.com)

Walmart is quietly testing ads inside Sparky, its AI shopping agent that launched in the retailer’s mobile app in June. People familiar with the matter say the company has piloted a format called “Sponsored Prompt,” letting advertisers insert paid content directly into conversational flows. The trials with select brands are an early attempt to monetize chat-based shopping by blending promotional prompts into the agent’s recommendations and queries, rather than relying on traditional banner placements. For the AI/ML community this signals a shift from static ad slots to context-aware, model-driven monetization: ad delivery will likely hinge on prompt engineering, ranking and personalization models that decide when and how to inject sponsored prompts without breaking conversational relevance. That raises technical and research questions around evaluation metrics (conversion vs. user satisfaction), robustness to manipulation, fairness, and privacy (how purchase history and session context are used). It also accelerates the need for transparent labeling, guardrails against biased or misleading sponsored outputs, and systems for measuring ad effectiveness in interactive, multi-turn settings — areas that will see growing attention as retailers look to commercialize assistant experiences.