How to plan a year of retail media advertising.

Topic: Annual Planning

Read Time: 4 minutes

Shaping customer perception is a year-round job.

At Best Buy Ads, many of our most comprehensive and strategic partnerships have 365 days of opportunities mapped out well in advance.

Now is the perfect moment to build a year-long strategy that reflects the way modern shoppers discover, research and buy tech. More efficient. More accountable. And more customized to your business goals.

Meet your annual planning partners.

Your successful year starts with the experts at Best Buy Ads.

The Partner & Category Marketing team supports each and every one of our brand partners. No matter if you’re a shopper marketer, brand marketer or an agency media buyer, we assign a dedicated category expert to assist your brand and find new ways to drive results.

For more detailed conversations with media agencies, our Agency Partnerships team engages in annual strategy meetings to create joint business plans—helping align on major media opportunities and big-picture thinking.

You’ll also have access to resources throughout our organization, including Ads Analytics, Creative Services and more to help you align your business goals.

Performance at the forefront.

When we kick off annual planning, one topic rises above the rest: performance.

New placements sound great on paper. But will they reach the right audience? Will they drive incremental sales you wouldn’t have captured otherwise?

That’s why performance is at the center of every annual plan we build. Every impression, click and video view is in service of the number one goal—a high-value purchase tied directly to your advertising.

Our results speak for themselves: Best Buy Ads partners see an average 3.75x return on ad spend, and 93% of all transactions are tied back to a customer ID.

This success doesn’t happen by chance. It comes from having a robust customer journey.

Building your funnel.

Sponsored Products on BestBuy.com and the Best Buy App put you directly in front of shoppers who are ready to buy. Being just clicks away from conversion makes it an essential tactic for driving sales goals.

However, the path to onsite success comes from a complete strategy that starts at awareness and paves every step to sale.

In each annual planning conversation, we’re focused on creating a full-funnel approach that leverages our wealth of first-party data and gives your customer a runway to becoming a brand loyalist.

Here are a few examples:

CTV provides breakthrough storytelling

Offsite display introduces you to new audiences

Paid social drives click-through to key destinations

Sponsored Products and onsite display lead to online sales

In-store experiences create memories—like our brand-new store takeovers

And even more highly targeted tactics

Together, these create a stacked effect—our brands see a 25–50% boost in campaign success when activating across multiple channels.

And to give you the ability to monitor that success in near real-time, our My Ads self-service platform provides 24/7 access to measurement across a variety of ad products, including:

Offsite display

Offsite video

Paid search

Onsite display

Onsite video

Sponsored Products (online sales only)

Sponsored Brands banners

Finding your time to shine.

We have a range of annual planning opportunities that can be broken down into three paths.

1. Always-on exposure

Show up all year with consistent media that keeps your brand in the conversation. From paid search driving evergreen demand to in-store video spotlighting in-stock SKUs.

2. Best Buy drivetimes

Our drivetimes are moments of peak traffic across Best Buy stores and digital channels. From holiday gifting to back-to-school season, these annual events give brands the opportunity to ride massive waves of enthusiasm and intent.

3. Make your moment

Your biggest opportunities don’t always follow a traditional calendar. Whether you're launching a hero product, pushing a major sales event or tapping into the passions that move tech shoppers, we help you create moments that matter.

Part of how we connect the dots is by aligning your brand with the cultural signals we see from your audience—like how we brought back midnight releases for Nintendo Switch 2. Every brand’s cultural moment is different, but all have an incredible opportunity at their fingertips. It’s our job to help you find yours.

When you build an annual plan with us, your investment works harder. We can balance the budget for the year, protect the moments that matter and unlock new opportunities for growth. No overspending in the first half. No glaring Q4 revenue shortfalls. Aligning on your goals early will set you up for maximum success all year long.”

Megan Kubacki

Director, Partner & Category Marketing

Best Buy Ads