Best Buy Ads does not want to be called a retail media network. Days after its upfront event, The Drop, the business is making the case that it is a commerce media company, one that starts from the sale and works back up the funnel. That shift raises a question CTV has never answered well: can television finally be measured on sales? Before the interview, Tom and Todd debate where retail media ends and commerce media begins, with Todd proposing a simple test of whether the product can land in the retailer's cart and Tom arguing that media can influence a purchase of the retailer's assortment without ever touching the cart.

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Patrick Albano joined Best Buy Ads as Chief Revenue Officer about five months before the recording. He spent the previous five years at The Trade Desk working closely with hundreds of retailers, including Walmart, and earlier worked in publishing, including Sports Illustrated, and served as a CMO for a few years. Best Buy has been running retail media since 2003 or 2004, and Albano says its edge is knowing what 220 million people have purchased over the past 10 years, which lets it understand what devices are in their homes and where they sit in the funnel.

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Albano argues classic media aggregates a large audience, guesses who might act and then tries to prove a sale happened, while Best Buy starts from the sale. For CTV, that means an advertiser can see down to the impression whether it sold a product at Best Buy. Because brand marketing remains central to TV, Best Buy also supports Kantar brand studies alongside multi-touch attribution, which the company spent the past year rebuilding and has now launched for all partners. At The Drop, Best Buy expanded its streaming inventory beyond Amazon to LG and Roku, and announced that, through its Amazon partnership, it now exclusively offers ad access to the Insignia Fire TVs it sells, giving it owned-and-operated CTV inventory.

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A Circana study gave the business new proof points. Best Buy media assets drove more sales than the parts of the same campaigns that ran off Best Buy, produced a 17% halo effect in sales at other retailers, and delivered a 10% lift in brand impact the following year. Albano notes the study was done before many of the newer media products launched, so he expects results to improve as TV, creators and upper funnel media become part of more campaigns.

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The store is a growing part of the canvas. In-store screens introduced the year before exceeded partner expectations, so Best Buy has added ad units around Geek Squad, new screens at the front of stores and a more scalable approach to in-person brand experiences. Albano points to Meta Lab, a partnership where shoppers can try Meta glasses with trained staff, and to an IKEA partnership from about a year ago as an example of a brand that does not sell at Best Buy. Unlike much of retail, Best Buy is opening new stores and formats. It is also turning Blue Shirts into creators, using their credibility for content that ranges from category explainers on new RGB TVs to lower funnel product links, expanding Best Buy Studios for brand partners, and launching on TikTok Shop.

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Behind the product push are changes on the marketer side. Albano sees brand and shopper teams increasingly sitting together or reporting to the same person, and, from his own time as a CMO, a CFO who demands proof that media drives sales. Shopping behavior is changing too, with Best Buy embedded in LLM assistants such as ChatGPT and Gemini as discovery moves away from review sites. On data, he describes one TV product sold through six or seven different swim lanes, such as a phone launch targeted by which operating system or TV a household already owns. He says data undersells the point: the real asset is consumer relationships, which cannot be recreated, reinforced by Best Buy servicing products through Geek Squad.

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Looking ahead, Albano expects brands to take three to five years to fully reorganize around a one-stop commerce media partner, and says agencies, which were in the room at The Drop, remain critical as holding companies acquire retail media businesses. He does not expect today's media categories to hold up. The direction he sees is media that follows each individual consumer's journey across every channel, with commerce companies like Best Buy positioned to connect that journey all the way to the sale.