Best Buy's Creative Playbook for Monetizing Its Footprint

In recent years, Best Buy has faced significant challenges – from intensifying e-commerce competition to a slower housing market weighing on major categories like appliances.

But the retailer hasn't been resting on its laurels, rolling out a range of initiatives aimed at unlocking value from its physical and digital assets, including an expanded online Marketplace to enhanced retail media offerings and a strategic partnership with IKEA.

So how are these efforts playing out on the ground? We dove into the data to explore the rationale behind these initiatives and see what foot traffic data can tell us about their impact and future potential.

IKEA Shop-in-Shop Drives Visits

One of the more visible ways Best Buy is making new use of its physical footprint is through its shop-in-shop partnership with IKEA, which launched in fall 2025 across 10 stores in Florida and Texas. 

The concept, designed to give customers an integrated way to upgrade their homes, pairs IKEA furnishings with Best Buy's kitchen and laundry offerings. By helping shoppers visualize complete home projects, the shop-in-shop creates natural cross-selling opportunities across complementary categories while providing an additional reason to visit segments that have faced persistent headwinds.

And foot traffic data suggests that the bet may be paying off. Through the first four months of 2026, Best Buy stores with IKEA shop-in-shops outperformed the national Best Buy fleet – as well as the chain's Texas and Florida benchmarks – every single month. And with Best Buy now opening consultation spaces inside IKEA stores in Frisco, Texas, and Tampa, Florida, the partnership between the two brands appears poised to deepen further.

Turning Pickup Runs Into Premium Ad Inventory

Best Buy is also unlocking additional value from its store fleet through an expanded physical retail media network. Beyond traditional in-store advertising placements, the company monetizes its growing volume of pickup visits through Curbside Cinema displays, giving brands access to shoppers during a brief but highly attentive moment when there are few competing distractions for their attention.

And the visit data shows just how significant that opportunity is. In Q1 2026, more than 20% of Best Buy visits lasted under ten minutes – well above the 14.2% logged across discretionary chains.  By serving short, brand-safe content during those windows, Best Buy is turning idle waiting time into measurable ad impressions, monetizing a moment most retailers let slip by unused.

Reaching Sports Fans In-Store

Best Buy is also experimenting with increasingly sophisticated in-store advertising activations. The retailer recently partnered with a sports streaming platform on an immersive store takeover, using exterior signage, digital displays, and branded experiences to engage shoppers at multiple touchpoints. The campaign built on a broader recognition that Best Buy's customer base skews heavily toward sports enthusiasts - with the retailer reporting that its shoppers are 26% more likely than average to be sports fans. And this affinity has helped drive partnerships with organizations such as the NFL while creating new opportunities for Best Buy Ads.

Placer data from four of Best Buy's most-visited locations in Q1 2026 shows that while sports fandom is a consistent thread across markets, the specific interests vary considerably. Brooklyn's Bay Parkway location, for example, draws especially high concentrations of NHL and baseball fans, while Holyoke, Massachusetts skews more heavily toward NFL enthusiasts. Each market has its own distinct mix. And in a retail media landscape where targeting precision is the primary selling point, these market-level differences are another opportunity Best Buy is well positioned to capture.

More Than a Place to Shop

As Best Buy seeks to become more than just a retailer, its stores are increasingly serving multiple functions at once – driving merchandise sales, supporting advertising initiatives, and helping brands connect with consumers. Given the early signs of traction behind these strategies, it may come as little surprise that incoming CEO Jason Bonfig plans to build on them as he pushes Best Buy further toward becoming "a retailer, media, advertising, and technology company."

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