What’s Wal-Mart Really Doing With Classifieds? A Few Details

One of the great mysteries is what Wal-Mart is really doing with classifieds. Last June, it signed up to use the Oodle platform, but not much has been heard from it since.

In this week’s Ad Age, Wal-Mart’s Duncan Dreschel sheds a little light, noting that the company seeks to simultaneously extend the brand, drive traffic to the site and help customers. “We see part of our role as connecting customers to help each other. It also allows us to provide a more complete offering.

“We’re looking at lots of things to make classifieds evolve,” he added. Already, he noted, some people close deals struck on the Web site in the parking lot of their nearest store.