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Best Buy leads with CTV ad inventory because it sells the screens, creating a closed-loop pitch smaller brands can copy by targeting content adjacency.
$500 to $1,000
per month
Best Buy announced at its annual showcase event Wednesday that connected TV ad inventory now anchors its retail media network pitch to brand advertisers, according to Modern Retail. The move flips the standard retail media script, where search and display ads on the retailer's own site typically lead. Best Buy is instead leveraging its electronics category authority — it sells the TVs — to position CTV as the flagship ad product.
The retailer operates a retail media network that sells advertising access to brands wanting to reach Best Buy's customer base. According to Modern Retail, Best Buy is now leading with CTV inventory in those pitches. This means brands buying media from Best Buy are being offered video ad placements that run on connected television devices, not just banner ads or sponsored product listings on BestBuy.com. The shift reflects Best Buy's category strength: it is one of the largest retailers of televisions and streaming devices in the United States, giving it a credible claim to CTV audiences that most grocery or general merchandise retailers cannot make.
The underlying mechanism works because Best Buy controls both ends of the transaction. It sells the hardware that customers use to watch streaming content, and it sells the ad inventory that runs on those devices. This vertical integration lets Best Buy offer brands a closed-loop proposition: advertise on the screens we sold, to the customers we already know. Retail media networks typically monetize first-party purchase data by serving ads back to shoppers on the retailer's own digital properties. Best Buy is extending that data advantage into the living room, where CTV ad rates command higher CPMs than standard display and where attribution to offline purchase is cleaner.
For a small physical product brand, the steal is to reverse-engineer the closed-loop pitch without owning the screen. Identify where your customer watches or listens after they buy from you. If you sell fitness gear, that might be YouTube fitness channels. If you sell kitchen tools, it might be recipe streaming apps or cooking shows on Roku. Buy small programmatic CTV placements on those exact channels using a self-serve platform like MNTN or StackAdapt, starting at $500 to $1,000 per month. Target by interest and geographic footprint, not broad demos. Tag the creative with a unique URL or QR code that drives back to a product page. Track which CTV placements produce site visits that convert to orders. Double down on the winning channel, cut the rest. You are replicating Best Buy's closed-loop logic — reach your buyer where they consume content, use a trackable offer, measure purchase lift — just without owning the TV network. The mechanic is the same: use content adjacency and purchase data to prove ad performance, not just impressions.
The broader pattern is that retail media is fragmenting into vertical-specific plays. Best Buy is not trying to compete with Amazon's search dominance. It is competing on the terms where it has structural advantage: electronics category expertise and a plausible claim to the screen itself. Physical product brands should apply the same principle. Find the media channel where your category authority gives you edge, then build the pitch around that, not around copying Amazon's ad stack.
Run small CTV tests on MNTN or StackAdapt at $500/month, targeting exact interest channels where your customer watches, with trackable QR offers.
For the operator
Pitch CTV placement tests to finance by showing closed-loop attribution from screen to cart, using Best Buy's vertical integration logic as proof of concept.
For the house
Ask retail media vendors if they offer CTV inventory with purchase-level attribution, not just reach metrics, before committing budget to standard display buys.
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