For retail media networks born out of large-scale commerce operations, the next phase of growth depends on looking beyond their own backyards.
As the sector matures, the imperative is shifting from servicing endemic brand partners to winning over the wider agency marketplace with scalable, easy-to-use advertising tools.
With US retail media ad spending projected to grow at a compound annual rate of 17.2% through 2028, according to eMarketer, the race is on to build the most accessible platform.
This is the strategic underpinning for Best Buy Ads, which sees programmatic as its key to unlocking relationships with holding companies and their clients.
From one-to-many to one-to-one
“Unlocking programmatic and deploying programmatic capabilities is allowing us to one, raise awareness about our offering and our fantastic first-party data, but really scale that across the entire marketplace,” said Amy McGovern, head of agency partnerships, East Coast, Best Buy Ads in this video interview with Beet.TV.
The pace of evolution in advertising has reached a fever pitch, with the convergence of commerce and media creating a landscape unlike any seen before, according to McGovern.
“We were in a very unique position, I would say, probably about eight years ago in this marketplace where we all kept saying ‘change is coming, change is coming’,” she said. “I’ve never seen change like this.”
The crucial difference now is the ability to move beyond probabilistic methods like lookalike modeling toward deterministic targeting based on actual customer relationships. For McGovern, this represents a fundamental market shift from a “one to many experience” to true one-to-one addressability, powered by high-fidelity, consented data that retailers have cultivated for years.
Best Buy believes its 100 million loyalty members give it the “right to win” in this new environment, presenting what she called an “unlimited” opportunity with agencies.
Simplifying access for agencies
To capitalize on that opportunity, eliminating friction is paramount. For years, agencies have navigated disparate systems and processes, and McGovern emphasized that a core objective for Best Buy Ads is to streamline access to its data and inventory. “As a person that has called on agencies and the holding companies for years, it could not be more important in this day and age to simplify that process,” she added.
To achieve this, the company is making its audience segments available through multiple avenues to ensure flexibility for its partners. This includes on-site activation through deal IDs and off-site activation by syndicating 150 of its audiences to major demand-side platforms (DSPs). This move reflects a broader industry trend where retailers are extending their media networks beyond their own properties to channels like connected TV and the open web.
Proving the value of these activations is the final piece of the puzzle. McGovern noted a commitment to building out a self-serve measurement roadmap within its My Ads platform to demonstrate return on investment. “That’s what they’re tasked with,” she said of advertisers seeking better business outcomes. “Eventually we want to be able to show holistic measurement and that’s really what the clients are looking for these days.”
The future is partnerships
McGovern sees programmatic technology as the engine that will not only scale the retail media sector but also enable a new wave of collaboration. She predicts the market will see more strategic alliances form as companies seek out synergies in their data sets.
“I think it’s going to further scale it and it’s going to allow us to open this up,” she said of programmatic’s role. “I think you’re going to see some very strategic partnerships that are going to take place, whether between corporations, sharing of data potentially, how do we infuse one another’s data, find synergies in that regard.”
The ultimate goal is to create a fully omnichannel view, where the precision of lower-funnel performance data can be applied to inform and measure upper-funnel brand-building activities. “To be able to take lower funnel performance metrics and apply them to upper funnel, that’s fantastic,” McGovern said. “I just think we’re going to see that more and more and that’s only just going to unlock more opportunity.”
You’re watching “How Programmatic is Powering the Retail Media Revolution, a Beet.TV Leadership Series, presented by Best Buy Ads.” For more videos from this series, please visit this page.
