By Katie Conzemius, The Mars Agency
Best Buy Ads, the consumer electronics giant’s retail media network, is launching a self-service ad platform later this year that will let brands and their agencies purchase, plan, monitor and manage their own campaigns.
Called My Ads, the platform will initially offer self-service reporting for onsite display and sponsored products campaigns on bestbuy.com, giving advertisers detailed insights that can be adjusted based on criteria such as time, products, and ad placement. It ultimately will let partners build and manage various campaign elements on their own.
Our Analysis
Launched in February 2022, Best Buy Ads provides access to 180 million shoppers that can be targeted across 3,000+ audience segments. The platform’s managed service currently provides limited visibility into campaign performance, which can hinder real-time optimization and ad quality assessment.
As a newcomer to the marketplace, Best Buy Ads has been listening to clients and working to provide them with greater transparency and control over their campaigns — and, in many cases, has made great strides in those efforts. In fact, their real-time optimization capabilities have improved dramatically in less than 12 months, according to The Mars Agency’s Retail Media Report Card.
In addition, Best Buy Ads has expanded well beyond bestbuy.com to provide opportunities across social media (including TikTok, Snapchat and Pinterest), CTV, streaming audio, and DOOH. Its collaborative efforts with advertisers have led to improvements in audience management, data analytics and the ability to leverage media buys to unlock marketing/merchandising opportunities elsewhere.
The self-service, real-time reporting for on-platform ads that will soon be available through My Ads is another great step forward. Based on what we’ve seen in the pilot, advertisers will gain the opportunity to self-determine audience segments, evaluate real-time performance data and optimize programming mid-campaign.
Combined with the platform’s industry-leading audience scale, these improved targeting and optimization capabilities should offer brands a lot of opportunities to effectively drive their business with Best Buy Ads in 2023.
Currently in pilot with seven partners, My Ads service will launch later this year, according to Best Buy.
“We’re always looking for ways to make it easier for our brand and agency partners to collaborate with our teams,” Keith Bryan, Best Buy’s president of advertising and media, said in a company announcement. “My Ads is one way that we are continuing to innovate and meet our partners where they are — allowing them to access our products and capabilities how and when they want them … to meet their ever-evolving needs.”
Best Buy Ads will continue providing managed services for partners “who want to collaboratively create more innovative and comprehensive campaigns,” according to the company statement.
For a deeper analysis of Best Buy Ads, download the latest edition of The Mars Agency’s Retail Media Report Card.
The Mars Agency has the “know how” and experience to help clients build a best-in-class partnership with Best Buy. For more information, contact Meghan Heltne, SVP-Client Leadership, at [email protected].
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About the Author
Katie Conzemius is Director of Customer Development in The Mars Agency’s Minneapolis office, where she leads the Best Buy practice.
Her 10-plus years of experience in commerce marketing includes a tour of duty in Best Buy’s brand advertising team working across major drive time campaigns, creative strategy, digital media, in-store marketing and other omnichannel disciplines.