Some retail analysts believe that if Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (NYSE: WMT) is to keep its presence as the largest retailer in the United States, it eventually will have to approach Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) in online sales volume. As time passes, that becomes less likely. Recent audience data show that, if anything, Walmart is too far behind to be competitive.

There is no evidence that Amazon’s size will allow it to move ahead of Walmart in revenue for years, although as its marketing and technology investments become a smaller part of revenue, its profits could approach those of Walmart in the United States. The stock market already has anticipated Amazon’s relative success. It market capitalization is $123 billion, compared to Walmart’s $243 billion, a small gulf given Walmart’s huge edge in annual sales.

The conventional wisdom, which is probably correct, is that a company that does not have stores, huge investments in real estate and hundreds of thousands of retail employees will have an edge in the long term. Walmart has all but admitted this as it sets online plans of its own, increases the speed with which it will ship products and presses plans for people to order things online and quickly pick them up in stores. But the leverage remains with Amazon. It had 108.3 million unique visitors in the United States last month, according to comScore. Walmart had 39.5 million. The Walmart figure dwarfs that of any other bricks-and-mortar retailer — no other is in in the top 50 most visited sites in May.

Amazon continues to press advantages that popular products bring it. The Kindle e-readers and tablets have been unqualified successes. There is every reason to believe that people who buy these and shop for e-content to load on them sometimes buy other products at Amazon. And its alliances with thousands of other “online stores” built though its Amazon Services program will not be matched by Walmart. The world’s largest retailer may even consider these allied companies as adversaries that can never be allies because they sell products that compete directly with Walmart’s. That in and of itself will be a factor that undermines the advance of Walmart.com.

Audience numbers show why Walmart has struggled online and eventually will falter very badly. It not only has an audience disadvantage, but its rigid models for gaining customers and e-commerce sales will push it even farther behind.

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