Best Buy bets its ad business on TikTok, not just its sales

Best Buy is joining TikTok Shop in late October with almost 10,000 products, and Retail Dive reports the launch alongside a telling detail: the retailer is opening its creator program and affiliate tools to advertisers at the same time. That second part is the story. This is less about selling laptops through short videos and more about building a dataset on which creators, videos and products actually drive purchases. The sales are a bonus; the tracking is the point.

Why the data matters more than the checkout

Best Buy's incoming CEO Jason Bonfig has said publicly that he wants to turn the company into a retail media, advertising and technology business, not only a store. TikTok Shop fits that ambition better than it fits the sales ledger. When a brand like Bose or Oura runs a campaign with affiliate links and shoppable posts, every click and conversion becomes attributable data. Best Buy can package that into audience insights and ad products it sells back to the same brands.

Retail media is now where the margin is. The thin retail markup on a Dyson vacuum is nothing next to the fees a brand will pay for proof that a specific creator moved units. TikTok Shop hands Best Buy a closed loop: discovery, click and fulfilment all measured in one place. That is the asset Bonfig is really acquiring here.

Electronics are a harder sell than Crocs

The success stories Retail Dive cites tell you what usually works on TikTok Shop. Crocs became the platform's top US shoe brand. Tarte, Pacsun and Sephora are cosmetics and apparel. These are cheap, impulse-friendly, visually demonstrable products that a fifteen-second video can sell outright. A $30 lipstick converts on a whim.

A $1,500 laptop does not. Consumer electronics carry longer research cycles, spec comparisons and return anxiety. Shoppers watch a review, then go read three more before buying. That behaviour clashes with the impulse mechanics TikTok Shop rewards. Best Buy's 10,000-item catalogue will probably see its actual volume concentrated in accessories, gadgets and low-ticket items, while the marquee brands drive views but slower conversions.

That is not a failure if the goal is data. Even a browsing customer who never checks out still generates a signal about what content earns attention. But it does mean the headline sales numbers may underwhelm anyone expecting TikTok to move Best Buy's core hardware.

The honest limits

Best Buy's financials give it little room to treat this as a moonshot. Revenue rose 1.6% last quarter to $9.4 billion, with comparable sales up 1.1%. That is a company grinding out low-single-digit growth, which is exactly why the higher-margin media pivot appeals. But a new channel needs volume to produce useful data, and it is not obvious Best Buy's audience overlaps heavily with TikTok's.

There is also platform risk baked in. TikTok's US future has been politically contested, and building an advertising apparatus on infrastructure that could change ownership or rules is a real exposure. Emarketer projects TikTok Shop could exceed $30 billion in US sales by 2028, so the opportunity is genuine. Best Buy's smart move is to treat this as a measurable experiment it can walk away from, not a channel it becomes dependent on.