Electronics giant Best Buy has inked a deal with publisher CNet that will mark a new type of media and brand partnership.
A selection of CNet’s editorial content and reviews will now appear on BestBuy.com, on the company’s app, and in stores, intended to help people pick products and get served reviews and insights about them. The companies will also allow brands to purchase advertising space across CNet and Best Buy and will share data with them on what content customers consume before buying products. Their combined properties reach a total 50 of million monthly unique visitors across web and app.
The companies reported that in tests done earlier this year, 86% of consumers said seeing CNet’s content while shopping made them feel more confident in purchases and garnered a 25% increase in purchase intent.
“When shopping for technology, we know that many consumers like to do their own research and turn to Best Buy and CNET to help them explore, discover and get inspired by new and exciting technology,” Jennie Weber, chief marketing officer at Best Buy, said in a statement. “This partnership allows us to integrate expert advice throughout every stage of the customer’s shopping journey.”
A new model
It’s a fascinating new model that combines “retail media” — retailers using shopping data to target ads on their sites — and brand publishing. Multiple companies have invested in content — either by building or acquiring publications — as a way to increase consumer trust, build themselves as an authority, and gain and retain customers. And retailers have found that they have an opportunity to use their valuable shopping and transaction data to power advertising — brands including Amazon, Walmart and even Chase have set up media arms that enable them to sell ads to other brands.
Put together, a strategic partnership (if not an outright sale) does make some sense at least on paper, particularly as both companies have similar audience profiles and there’s obvious overlap in content and subject matter.
A partnership over an outright acquisition also can be beneficial because it takes some logistical and cultural headaches out of the equation, said Mike Mallazzo, who runs business development at Forum Brands, which owns e-commerce brands including Lola and Simka Rose. Mallazzo (who wrote a piece arguing that Best Buy should buy CNet a few months ago) said from his perspective, the problem of buying a media company is always “It looks good on a spreadsheet, but running it is very hard, there are eventual cultural problems.” As we covered a few months ago, a number of brands have parted ways with editorial entities they’ve acquired, as cultural clashes and personality mismatches prove challenging to navigate.
The downside of not acquiring the company wholly, of course, is that Best Buy doesn’t fully own the actual asset, but is instead basically licensing the content temporarily. That means that other uses, such as using content to train an AI for product reviews, are off the table, potentially. That’s something Amazon, for example, has been working on with Rufus, a conversational AI trained on content.
Red Ventures has been exploring future paths, including a potential sale, for the beleaguered news site for a few months. Despite a storied brand, the company has suffered massive losses in search traffic.
On Best Buy’s end, the company is trying desperately to compete in an Amazon world, but has expertise on its side thanks to its Geek Squad roots. Retail media is growing quickly as brands realize that retailers have access to valuable first-party customer data like purchase histories to better target ads. Retail media is to hit $82 billion in revenue by 2028, making up 19% of total ad spend.