The electronics retailer is officially making its play as a retail media heavyweight. Speaking at the IAB’s Connected Commerce Summit in New York, the president of Best Buy Ads set out how it plans to stand apart in a crowded field.
Lisa Valentino, president of Best Buy Ads
Lisa Valentino, president of Best Buy Ads and a former Disney executive, didn’t waste time setting the tone at the IAB’s Connected Commerce Summit in New York, where she laid out Best Buy’s retail media journey and revealed a new chapter with the official debut of Best Buy Ads on September 16.
“When you want to be a media company, you have to position yourself at the intersection of technology and culture,” she said. For Best Buy, that means moving beyond selling gadgets to shaping the cultural moments those gadgets power – from gaming launches to holiday shopping.
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Retail media may feel like the hot new thing, but as Valentino pointed out, Best Buy has “been at this for a decade.” Last year alone, the retailer ran campaigns with 600 brands. The turning point came this summer with Nintendo’s Switch 2 pre-order launch, which broke records and even brought back midnight openings.
“Nearly 60% of all online orders for this device were picked up in store. We created a cultural moment around the unboxing. It was huge,” she said. That lightning-in-a-bottle moment convinced her there’s a far bigger opportunity in blending buzz with data-driven solutions.
Valentino outlined three big lessons Best Buy is leaning into:
Solutions, not slots. “It’s really about selling solutions – understanding at a customer level what they’re trying to accomplish.”
Standardization or bust. With more than 200 retail media networks crowding the market, she warned, “If we don’t standardize, the flight to consolidation will just happen very rapidly. Coca-Cola can’t buy 200 versions of anything.”
Operate at tech speed. “We need to be in a mindset that we are a startup – that we are shipping code every 30 days.”
Much of the future rests on automation and self-service. The retailer has launched a programmatic platform capable of working with “thousands of customers, not hundreds.” Measurement is being overhauled with new forecasting and optimization tools. And creativity – often overlooked in retail media – is a priority, powered by a 77,000-square-foot in-house ad agency.
“We ran 3,000 campaigns last year and made all of them from a creative standpoint. Nobody knows the customer better than Best Buy,” she noted.
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What sets Best Buy apart, Valentino argued, is its footprint: 1,000 stores and 100 million members. That scale unlocks collaborations with brands from Meta to Ikea and pilots for in-store “takeovers” that blur the line between retail and entertainment.
“What an opportunity to build experiences around that kind of physical presence. Nintendo taught us a lot this summer, but there’s a lot more to come.”
For other marketers, the takeaway is clear: retail media is no longer just about clicks and conversions. It’s about building cultural relevance, standardizing where possible and moving with the speed of technology.
Or as Valentino put it: “Not all good ideas have to be yours. Sometimes the biggest leap forward is collaboration.”
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