For all the industry’s complaints about opacity, Meta became a walled garden marketers could not ignore because it had daily consumer attention, deep behavioral signals and enough advertising utility to justify the trade-off. But will Walmart’s walled garden go the way of Meta or end up as another AOL? A walled garden can feel like a castle until the rest of the neighborhood discovers alternatives. A smaller walled garden has a different problem: Convenience is not the same as inevitability. Performance marketers need to know whether CTV is lifting search and improving reach, and whether it’s attracting incremental or repeat customers.