The Store Becomes Programmatic
On June 16, ad-tech firm Perion announced that Best Buy Canada, the country's largest consumer-electronics omnichannel retailer, selected it as the full-stack technology partner to power and monetize its in-store digital-out-of-home media network. The companies describe the result as one of the largest SSP-enabled DOOH media networks in the Canadian market, shifting Best Buy Canada from legacy in-store signage systems to a fully programmatic retail-media model. The key word is programmatic: the screens in the store will be traded like digital ad inventory, not booked like billboards.
We see this as a concrete marker of where retail media is heading. The category's first wave was almost entirely about online inventory, sponsored products and on-site banners on retailer websites. The next wave is the physical store, where retailers possess something genuinely scarce: the attention of shoppers at the moment of purchase. Turning that attention into impression-level, programmatically tradable inventory is the logical extension of the retail-media thesis, and Best Buy Canada is moving aggressively to capture it.
Why In-Store Inventory Is Hard to Build
Best Buy Canada is deploying Perion's comprehensive suite, including its Ad Server, SSP, and Header Bidding technologies, to enable impression-level decisioning across its in-store screens. That technical stack matters because in-store retail media is far harder to operationalize than its online counterpart. Online, the infrastructure for programmatic trading is mature and standardized. In the physical store, retailers have historically run signage on legacy systems never designed for real-time, impression-level ad decisioning.
The deal is therefore as much about modernizing infrastructure as about selling ads. Moving from static signage to programmatic decisioning requires the plumbing, the ad server, the supply-side platform, the bidding logic, to function reliably across a fleet of physical screens. We think the choice to partner with a full-stack provider rather than build this in-house reflects a sound instinct. The expertise required to run real-time programmatic trading is specialized, and retailers that try to assemble it internally often discover the complexity the hard way. Best Buy Canada chose to buy the capability rather than learn it.
The Economics for the Retailer
The financial logic is compelling and explains why retail media has become such a fixation across the industry. Retail-media networks generate high-margin advertising revenue from inventory the retailer already owns, the screens and shelf space that exist regardless. For a consumer-electronics retailer operating on the notoriously thin margins of hardware sales, a high-margin advertising stream is transformative to the overall profit picture. The store stops being purely a cost of selling and becomes a media property in its own right.
Best Buy Canada's senior vice president, Thierry Hay-Sabourin, framed it in terms of modernization and scale, saying "Perion provides the technology foundation to help modernize and scale our in-store media offering." We read the emphasis on scale as the crux. A handful of screens running ads is a novelty; a programmatically traded network across a national store footprint is a business line. The retailers winning at retail media are those that treat it as serious infrastructure deserving real investment, not a side experiment, and this deal reflects that seriousness.
What Perion Gains
The arrangement is strategically important for Perion as well, and the company was candid about why. By serving as foundational infrastructure for a market leader, Perion deepens its presence in the fast-growing retail-media vertical, expands its access to premium, brand-safe DOOH inventory, and supports its push toward more predictable, infrastructure-level revenue. CEO Tal Jacobson framed the win as proof of strategy: "By serving as a foundational infrastructure for a market leader such as Best Buy Canada, we demonstrate that our Perion One strategy allows us to win complex, enterprise-level mandates."
We find the infrastructure-level revenue framing telling about how ad-tech companies are repositioning. Becoming the embedded technology layer beneath a major retailer's media network is a stickier, more defensible business than transactional ad sales, because the retailer builds its operations on top of you. Premium, brand-safe inventory inside a trusted electronics retailer is also exactly what advertisers want, particularly as they grow wary of low-quality programmatic environments. The deal positions Perion as a picks-and-shovels supplier to the retail-media boom rather than a participant in the volatile ad-buying market.
The Pattern Spreads
This partnership reflects a broader movement we expect to accelerate sharply: retailers converting in-store screen real estate into programmatically tradable retail-media inventory. As online retail media matures and its growth rates compress, the physical store represents the next large, underexploited opportunity, and the retailers who build the infrastructure early will capture a disproportionate share of the advertiser budgets that follow. First movers tend to set the standards and lock in the demand.
For retail and commerce technology leaders, the strategic question is no longer whether to pursue in-store retail media but how to build it well. The choices, build versus buy, which technology partner, how to balance ad load against customer experience, will shape both the revenue upside and the shopper experience for years. Overload the screens and you degrade the store; underinvest and you cede the opportunity to competitors. Best Buy Canada's move with Perion is a notable data point in what we believe will become a defining competition in physical retail, and the playbook it establishes will be widely studied.
