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Best Buy is expanding its retail media business into connected TV. The US electronics retailer has extended its partnership with Amazon and will be able to sell Fire TV ad inventory through Best Buy Ads going forward. The technical foundation is Amazon Ads' programmatic infrastructure.
The launch is planned for February 2027. Best Buy Ads will then use Amazon's ad tech, including AI-supported tools for planning, activation, optimization and measurement of campaigns.
Ads on existing and new Insignia Fire TVs
The partnership concerns Best Buy's Insignia TV devices, on which Fire TV has run as the operating system for years. According to Best Buy and Amazon, ten million of these devices have been brought into households since 2018.
In future, Best Buy Ads can offer brands access to Fire TV ad inventory on new and existing Insignia TVs. A device partnership thus also becomes a media partnership.
For advertisers, the combination is the most interesting part: Best Buy contributes purchase and retail data from its own ecosystem, while Amazon provides the streaming and programmatic infrastructure. According to Amazon, brands should also gain insight into how Fire TV campaigns affect relevant business results.
Retail media moves into the living room
This move fits a broader trend. Retail media networks have long been trying to capture budgets not only on retailer websites and apps, but also across CTV, social, offsite and in-store media.
Walmart is pursuing the same path and is deliberately developing Walmart Connect beyond traditional retail media inventory. Our analysis of Full-Funnel Retail Media also shows why video and offsite reach are becoming increasingly important for retailer networks.
Best Buy is particularly well positioned for this: the retailer not only sells consumer electronics, but also controls its own TV hardware with Insignia and has its own advertising organization in Best Buy Ads.
In-store advertising is growing in parallel
Connected TV is only one layer. Best Buy had already announced that it would market its physical stores more strongly as advertising space. Planned are, among other things, takeover packages, in which brands can become visible through windows, entrance areas, TV walls, monitor surfaces and other digital and physical touchpoints.
In doing so, Best Buy is moving toward a model in which retailers convert as many touchpoints as possible into a shared media product. A similar pattern can now also be seen outside traditional retail: McDonald's is building its app, kiosks and restaurants into its own media network.
Why the Amazon partnership is strategically relevant
For the CTV expansion, Best Buy does not have to build a completely proprietary streaming ad tech stack. Instead, the company uses Amazon Ads as its technical layer and contributes its own customer relationships and sales data.
The deal is also interesting for Amazon: its ad technology lands in another large retail media network and on devices that run Fire TV but are sold under Best Buy's Insignia brand.
For brands, the line between retail media and connected TV advertising is becoming even blurrier. In future, what will matter is not only where an ad is delivered, but which first-party data sits behind targeting and measurement. This is exactly why retail media networks are increasingly competing for brand and video budgets, as we also explored in the question of why retail media is pushing harder into brand building.