Best Buy joins Walmart, Target with in-house media company
The leading U.S. consumer electronics retailer is taking its targeted advertising activities to a new level.
Best Buy is launching Best Buy Ads, its new in-house media company designed to help its suppliers provide shoppers with targeted, timed promotional messages based on its customer relationships and insights. According to Best Buy, it interacts with its customers 3 billion times a year in-store and online.
In August 2021, Best Buy began enabling advertisers to use Criteo’s cross-retailer, self-service platform to reach BestBuy.com and BestBuy.ca shoppers in the U.S. and Canada. Through sponsored products, the platform helps Best Buy customers further discover and purchase products.
The Criteo retail media platform allows brand marketers and agencies to reach consumers shopping on e-commerce sites, while executing campaigns with full transparency and control. Leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities, Criteo’s retail media ads conform to the same targeting and personalization as Best Buy’s organic product placements, helping ensure a seamless and relevant shopper experience.
Two other major national chains with a large consumer electronics presence – Walmart and Target – are also active in enabling targeted advertising for their customer bases. Walmart recently rolled out a demand-side platform for suppliers and their media and ad agencies in time for the 2021 holiday season. Initially announced during the introduction of the Walmart Connect media platform in January 2021, the Walmart demand-side platform (DSP) is a collaborative effort with independent demand-side platform The Trade Desk.
Meanwhile, Target launched its Roundel ad network in 2019 as a tool for CPG brands to create personalized digital ad campaigns aimed at Target customers. Roundel helps advertisers connect directly with Target's customers through personalized, relevant marketing messages across Target's owned platforms and hundreds of select off-platform channels.
At least four other big-name national retailers have launched similar digital third-party ad networks in the past year: Family Dollar, Walgreens, Kroger, and CVS.
The retailer is also integrating Best Buy Ads with its previously announced five-year plan to address underrepresentation and technology inequities, and create educational and career opportunities. With the help of some of its partners and the Best Buy Foundation, Best Buy Ads is launching an advertising-focused Career Pathways program through Best Buy Teen Tech Center locations across the country.
[Read more: Best Buy develops future tech resources]
Starting in February 2022, this advertising program will help strengthen skills used in the advertising industry to help create opportunities and a pipeline of fresh, diverse talent for advertising industry careers.
"With Best Buy Ads, we're able to tap into the unique relationships only Best Buy has with its customers," said Keith Bryan, president of Best Buy Ads, media strategy, & CRM. "Technology is all around us—it’s in our cars, our kitchens, and more than ever, how our families are working and learning at home. With Best Buy Ads, brands can be right there alongside our customers as they adapt and go about their lives.”