Best Buy Says the Aisle Is the Ad Network: Retail Media Revenue Closes In on $1 Billion

The last big-box electronics chain standing is quietly becoming an ad company. Best Buy says its retail media business is on track to grow ad revenue roughly 10% this year, building on the $900 million it booked last year and putting the billion-dollar mark within reach.

Incoming CEO Jason Bonfig framed the push as a promise kept, saying the company is "advancing Best Buy as a retail media advertising and technology" player — language that would have sounded absurd for a gadget store a decade ago and now reads like standard retail grammar. Every screen in the store, every placement on the app, every sponsored search result is inventory.

The context is a land rush. With Amazon having proven the model and Walmart and Target scaling their own networks, mid-tier retailers are discovering that vendor ad budgets — especially from electronics brands fighting for shelf prominence — are higher-margin than the products themselves.

The risk is the same one every retail media network faces: clutter the experience and shoppers notice. Best Buy's bet is that its high-consideration, research-heavy shopper is exactly the audience tech brands will pay a premium to reach — and that a billion dollars of ads can hide in plain sight.