Walmart wants to build an advertising business that rivals Amazon. Here are the 11 execs leading the charge.

Alexis Josephs; Kara Rousseau; Dave Chiang; Ruobing Su/Business Insider

Walmart is trying to build up its advertising business.

• Walmart is ramping up its efforts to compete with Amazon's advertising business, taking its ad sales in house and rolling out a self-serve ad platform and API to sell search ads.
• Business Insider identified 11 executives who are leading the retailer's advertising push. They include people in marketing, product and sales and many come from agency, brand, and media backgrounds.
• The stakes are high for Walmart, which wants a piece of the growing e-commerce ad budgets that Amazon dominates today.
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Walmart has quietly run an advertising business for years. Now it's ramping up the business to rival Amazon.

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Earlier this month, Walmart formally rolled out a self-serve platform and API that lets advertisers buy search ads or work with adtech companies to manage their campaigns. Walmart tested the tools with advertisers like gaming manufacturer Razer late last year. Last year, Walmart took its ad sales business in house after outsourcing it to agency Triad.

Walmart's profit has declined in recent years, and advertising represents another potential source of profit. "Our data has never been monetized, and we have a tiny ad business," president and CEO Doug McMillon told analysts in 2018, The Wall Street Journal reported. "It could be bigger."

Amazon has been growing its ad business and is now the third-largest digital advertising company behind Google and Facebook. While research firm Cowen expects Amazon to make $17.6 billion from advertising this year, up 36% from 2019, Walmart doesn't break out its ad revenue. Last year, a WPP executive estimated that Walmart made $2 billion to $3 billion from advertising, AdAge reported.

Walmart can't match Amazon's clout, so it's banking on its physical stores and the sales data they generate as a key differentiator.

Advertisers are spending more dollars with online retailers, where people already have their wallets out and the retailers have rich data on them, and they're eager for a company to challenge Amazon, which they complain is hard to navigate, doesn't share enough data, and presents conflicts of interest.

But Walmart also isn't alone - Target, Best Buy, and Kroger are also getting into advertising as their retail businesses struggle to compete with Amazon.

And Walmart's advertising efforts have been rocky. The retailer has long run an advertising business through its Walmart Media Group, but is new at running its ad business all by itself.

Some advertisers have said Walmart's ad business has been fraught with delays in campaigns and questions about how Walmart structures its agency and brand teams.

Business Insider compiled a list of 11 Walmart execs who are key to its advertising push.

The list is based on our reporting and spans marketing, sales and product execs. Many of them worked at ad agencies, brands, and media companies. Most of the executives on the list work at Walmart Media Group. We also included some on the retail side who are key to showing how Walmart's store and e-commerce data differentiates it from Amazon.

Here are the execs leading Walmart's advertising push, in alphabetical order.