Best Buy Ads held its first advertising technology event on
Tuesday, showcasing new ad media and creative services, and announcing expanded partnerships and future offerings.
The National Football League (NFL); TLG, a golf league; and a new partnership
with YouTube creators Dude Perfect were some of the partnerships announced.
The company spoke with MediaPost about changes to its advertising and creative services supported by
artificial intelligence (AI), predictive data technologies and new formats, as well as advanced attribution, automation and measurement reporting.
Forthcoming additions to its reporting
services will include many more options. Its programmatic ad buying services will add new types of media opportunities for display ads such as guaranteed deal IDs through demand side platforms
(DSPs).
“We’re sitting on a sleeping giant,” Lisa Valentino, president of Best Buy Ads, told MediaPost, as she described a 77,000-square-foot creative studio in
Minneapolis where the ads are created.
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Last year Best Buy Ads ran 3,000 campaigns for brands, making every piece of creative for the campaigns, stretching across connected TV (CTV),
digital, social, and in stores, Valentino said. This year she expects to double that.
Tracking engagement and reporting will play a big role in the future of the company's ad services. Best
Buy Ads can track about 93% of its transactional revenue back to a customer ID. Its audience segments, built with first party online and offline data, in the future will become available to support
partnerships with The Trade Desk, Google Display & Video 360, Yahoo DSP, and others.
The past year has been spent building platform capabilities and a roadmap into the future of
advertising, so brands can connect with its more than 100 million members.
Between 30% and 40% of online purchases are picked up in any one of Best Buy’s more than 1,000 physical stores,
and this is an opportunity to create a complete marketing funnel that targets and engages potential customers at every stage of their buying journey, Valentino said.
“We sit at the
intersection of reach and tech culture,” Valentino said, adding that no other company knows the tech consumer better than Best Buy," she said. “Technology is the underpinning of culture.
Think about sports, entertainment, next new gadgets, and tech companies unveiling innovations in AI.”
Everything is powered by AI and data science, said Milena Krasteva, vice president
and head of product at Best Buy Ads. She joined the company five months ago from Walmart Connect to further capabilities, in part, in Best Buys’ My Ads platforms.
Best Buy Ads is
partnering with companies like Adobe to support services. Forthcoming services in advertising will come from its ecommerce business like data and learnings around chatbots and agentic technology.
The ad technology roadmap for the next two to three years includes building services so advertisers can buy full-funnel media on a self-service bases, onsite as well as off Best Buy sites,
simultaneously.
The company offers some reporting formats today for online and offsite media, but plans to add many more in the coming year.