How Wal-mart Owns The Concept of Value Online

Walmart has been ramping up its online presence lately.  This Advertising Age article shows the implications:  

 

"What makes Walmart's efforts so interesting is its ability to "own" the concept of value online. It launched free classifieds last year, and its site, thanks to its blogger outreach and online message boards, is already crammed with content about saving money that will only grow as it builds out Save Money Live Better, a portal for penny-pinching strategies. In fact, amid all the talk of how digital has allowed marketers to be their own creators and distributors of brand content -- some people would call this a media company -- perhaps no one has the potential to be as big a juggernaut as Walmart."

"Yet with its major competitors in value retailing -- such as Costco and dollar stores -- largely absent from digital media, Walmart stands to grab a much larger share-of-mind digitally than even its dominant share of wallet in the offline world. In that, it has the support of some heavyweight marketers."

The emergence of Walmart as its own media company (fueled by it's own growing in-store TV network) is another example of the ever-changing ownership of media.