Remember when Best Buy was where you bought a flat-screen and maybe got sweet-talked into a $99 HDMI cable you didn’t need? Those days are gone. Now Best Buy is selling… itself.

The new survival plan isn’t about moving more gadgets. It’s about turning every inch of its stores—walls, counters, checkout lines, the Geek Squad desk where you wait to hear that your hard drive is toast—into paid ad space.

The numbers tell the story:

So the boardroom solution? Stop just selling TVs and start renting out the store like an Airbnb for brands.

Best Buy is launching “store takeover” packages starting in 2025. That means advertisers can essentially hijack a location for 30 days and brand the whole experience.

Think:

And the early adopters? IKEA, Meta, the NFL, and Dude Perfect. Yes, we’re now in the era where even YouTubers get shelf space next to your printer ink.

This isn’t just shelf talkers—it’s sequential storytelling as you move through the store. Buy a toaster, watch an ad for a car, then pick up your headphones while Meta beams AR ads into your skull.

Here’s the logic: 40% of Best Buy’s online orders are picked up in-store. That means millions of people walking in, even if they never browse.

To monetize that, Best Buy has built a 70,000-square-foot creative studio—a Hollywood-for-hire designed to crank out campaigns at scale. Think of it as a retail ad factory welded onto a gadget warehouse.

The pitch to brands is simple: why settle for a banner ad online when you can own the entire store aisle in real life?

On paper, this is clever. Turn your biggest liability (giant stores) into your biggest ad canvas. Retail media is hot, brands are desperate for new surfaces, and Best Buy wants to be the Times Square of consumer electronics.

But let’s be real:

👉 Spoiler: the privacy traps, the operational chaos, and the industry fallout are exactly why you’ll want the next three parts in ADOTAT+.

Because the question isn’t just whether Best Buy can sell ad space—it’s whether it can do it without selling its soul.

Let’s start with the obvious: Best Buy is not collapsing, but it’s not thriving either. Revenue ticked up a modest 1.6% year-over-year to $9.44 billion. That’s respectable until you see profits nose-dive 36% to $186 million. Tariffs, inflation, and consumers pinching pennies like they’re auditioning for a Depression-era drama all add up to one thing: Best Buy is profitable, but in a “digging for change in the couch cushions” kind of way.

They’re not bankrupt—but they are officially in the “we need a side hustle” stage of retail.

Retailers from Walmart to Target to Kroger have figured out that ads are more profitable than groceries or gadgets. Why bother sweating supply chains when you can sell ad space on your end caps and call it media innovation?

Best Buy’s differentiator is its tech credibility and its pickup culture—a staggering 40% of online orders get picked up in-store. That’s not just traffic; that’s a captive audience standing around, phone in hand, waiting to be marketed to.

Translation: while you’re waiting for Chad from Geek Squad to bring your router, Best Buy wants you staring at a McDonald’s ad on the counter.

This isn’t just posters on walls. Best Buy is pitching sequential storytelling across the store.

It’s basically a marketing funnel disguised as a shopping trip. By the time you hit order pickup, you’ve gone through the awareness, consideration, and conversion stages—all without leaving the building.

Here’s where it gets weird. Best Buy isn’t just hawking shelf space to Samsung or Sony. They’re courting non-endemic advertisers—brands that don’t sell a single thing in Best Buy stores.

Think McDonald’s, auto makers, movie studios. Want to sell hamburgers, hatchbacks, or the next Marvel flop? Apparently, Best Buy is your new stage.

Because nothing says “buy a car” like standing in line for printer ink.

The real play here is scale. Forget renting a shelf or a single screen. Best Buy wants advertisers to rent entire stores for 30-day activations.

That’s big-ticket revenue. This isn’t about slapping a logo on a TV aisle—it’s about owning an entire location and turning it into a month-long brand experience.

Translation: Best Buy is basically saying, “You like that end cap? Cool. Now imagine if the entire store was yours.”

Best Buy isn’t just chasing ads—they’re betting the company brand on it.

On paper, it’s airtight. Closed-loop attribution in a physical store—the holy grail that makes CMOs drool.

That’s the glossy math Best Buy is selling. But here’s the part you don’t see in the press release:

👉 That’s Part 3 (The Risks Nobody Wants to Talk About) — and you’ll need ADOTAT+ to get it.

Because the real story isn’t the numbers Best Buy brags about. It’s the numbers—and risks—they don’t.