Best Buy Launches New Advertising Business, Best Buy Ads

MINNEAPOLIS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--For decades, Best Buy has been helping customers discover, try, and buy some of the most innovative products out there. No one knows consumer technology — and has the deep relationships with the people who buy it — like we do.

That’s why we’re excited to announce Best Buy Ads, our new in-house media company that will help shoppers discover products, services, and offers. With our deep customer insights, we will partner with relevant brands in a variety of new and holistic ways, to provide meaningful messages at the right time.

We interact with our customers three billion times a year — in our stores, in their homes, and online. These relationships last longer and run deeper than most. Knowing our customers on this level means we can help other brands cut through the clutter with advertising that won’t waste our customers’ time. With Best Buy Ads, we can show more of what interests our customers, when it interests them, and even help them save money. Whether a brand sells products at Best Buy or offers complementary products and solutions our customers need, we can help them reach their audience on our own channels (think BestBuy.com or in-store) and on external sites with a broad portfolio of offerings.

We have spent the past few years building a business that can analyze the data from our customer relationships and recommend relevant ways to connect with customers based on cutting-edge data science and analytics. It’s an innovative approach to advertising, in line with the innovative tech we sell. Just what you’d expect from Best Buy.

Diversifying an industry, creating equitable opportunities

There’s more to Best Buy Ads than connecting brands with shoppers, including an important focus on inclusion and diversity. In the advertising industry alone, according to labor market data, 73% of hires are white.

We’ve pledged to do better and, last year, Best Buy unveiled a five-year plan to address underrepresentation and technology inequities as well as create educational and career opportunities for those who need it most. As part of this pledge, we announced that Best Buy will dedicate nearly 10% of its annual media spend to BIPOC media by 2025.

With this in mind, and with the help of some of our partners and the Best Buy Foundation, Best Buy Ads is launching an advertising-focused Career Pathways program through our Best Buy Teen Tech Center locations across the country. The goal of this new program is to create opportunities and a pipeline of talented and diverse candidates for future advertising careers. Teens in this program will have access to internships, mentorships with professionals and paid work-based experiences all within the advertising industry.

For more information on Best Buy Ads, visit BestBuyAds.com.