In this episode, Heidrick & Struggles’ Nicole Balsam and Haven Thompson sat down with Lisa Valentino, president of Best Buy Ads, which is the in-house regional media arm of Best Buy. The three discuss the growth in retail media networks and what this means for talent across the retail, media, and ad tech sectors. Valentino shares the capabilities and skill sets that are most important for talent today, and what sectors outside of retail media networks can be relevant experience. She also discusses how generative AI is affecting the retail media networks space, and how she expects the space to continue evolving in the next few years.

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Hi, and welcome to The Heidrick & Struggles Leadership Podcast. I'm Haven Thompson, a partner in our Global Technology & Services Practice. 

Nicole Balsam: And I'm Nicole Balsam, a principal in our Consumer Markets Practice. 

Haven Thompson: Today, Nicole and I are excited to speak to Lisa Valentino, president of Best Buy Ads, the in-house regional media arm of Best Buy, about the growth in retail media networks and what this means for talent across the retail, media, and ad tech sectors.

With a proven track record of leveraging data technology and innovation to drive exponential growth and lead large-scale transformations, Lisa was appointed president of Best Buy Ads in October 2024. In this role, she leads sales, product development, and reporting, steering the company's advertising division toward new heights.

Nicole Balsam: Prior to joining Best Buy, Lisa served as the executive vice president of client and addressable sales at the Walt Disney Company, where she played a pivotal role in modernizing Disney's advertising platforms by driving the shift from linear to streaming and integrating advanced data and programmatic solutions. Lisa also served as chair of the board of the Advertising Club of New York. 

Haven Thompson: Lisa, welcome, and thank you so much for joining us today. 

Nicole Balsam: Lisa, to kick us off, since we're speaking to a general audience of professionals, will you help us define what retail media networks are and why there's so much buzz around them?

Lisa Valentino: I would be happy to, and it is a pleasure to be here with you both today. Simply put, retail media networks are advertising platforms that are owned and operated by retailers, and it allows for a level of granularity, frankly, that media companies may not have, since it provides advertisers access to things like unique first-party data.

I think there is so much buzz around retail media for three reasons. One, there is an incredible amount of data that retail media companies are sitting on. I remember early days Yahoo, when I first got into this business, somebody close to me shared: the winners in media of the future are going to be those that have the closest proximity to the customer. And that today is through the lens of data.

And so, you have this burgeoning sort of new area of growth happening, first and foremost because of that relationship and because of the data graph that so many of us sit on. Two, the distribution, you know, and it's different, right? The distribution footprint of Walmart is different than, for example, Best Buy, but what it allows us to bring to market is scale, right? And that is both distribution onsite, across all of our owned and operated channels, but also offsite through partnership. The third piece that I think creates this excitement around the sector is brand loyalty, and for us at Best Buy, that is something that the company has built from day one.

And it's interesting, if you look at what I just described—sophisticated data, scalability, and brand loyalty—you would think that I was describing any media platform, when in reality it is now this next generation of media, retail media that I think is well underway.

Haven Thompson: Great, Lisa. Prior to becoming president of Best Buy Ads, you had an impressive career across media companies, including Disney, Conde Nast, and ESPN, and most recently served as EVP of client and addressable sales at Disney. So, what drew you to join Best Buy? 

Lisa Valentino: You know, one of my favorite moments, which was early in my career in ’97, was joining Yahoo and feeling like we were taking over the world and, you know, really building something. That had really quote-unquote “never been done before,” and that has carried through almost every stop along my professional journey.

For me, it's always been about three things. It starts with the people, and I dated Best Buy for several months before joining the team, and there are lots of things that excite me about Best Buy that I'll share in a minute, but at the top of the list—and there's a pretty big gap between number one and number two—are the people. 

From Corie Barry, our CEO, to my boss, Jason Bonfig, it is a group of exceptionally talented people that have a competitive drive like no other, that are super smart and are open to navigating a very different future for the company. So first and foremost, it's the team. 

The other big draw was the potential to re-architect. So, I'm a builder. I love to build. I spent a lot of time in my career in digital. When it was first being started, I pivoted to Disney really through the lens of streaming. And now this third chapter is all about retail media, and it's a lot of re-architecture required to create this next wave. So that was a really big draw for me. 

The third piece is the performance layer. You know, especially in my last role, how we define performance is very different than how retail media defines performance. Our ability to tie real return on investment attribution work that ties back to real revenue sales that we know are so important to our clients. It's exciting to be playing with a toolkit like that of Best Buy.

So those are the things that are exciting me as I think about the next two to three years for the business. It is going to be the most rewarding years, I think, at Best Buy, and I think it's also going to be some of the more rewarding problems we have to solve. And frankly, I'm hoping as I get more and more connected to the industry of retail media that we're not just solving problems for Best Buy, but we're also helping solve problems for the industry.

Haven Thompson: Thank you for that additional perspective. Lisa, because retail media networks are a new space, few people have really come up in it from a career perspective. When you think about hiring, what are you looking for in candidates? What capabilities and skill sets are most important to have, and what sectors outside of retail media networks do you look to for talent? 

Lisa Valentino: It's a really good question. It's funny you bring it up because when I first was introduced to Best Buy, I said to myself, and I actually said to maybe some of the executives at Best Buy, why me? 

Right? I didn't grow up in retail. It's not the mindset that I've been functionally trained on, right? So, I think it's a really important question, and as media evolves, we have to think about what are the transferable skill sets to drive the future. And so, where I go, and by the way, you know, a plug for Best Buy, we are hiring, and I believe we're going to be on that journey for several years, right, as we build out literally a new division for the company.

So, the skill sets that are important, I think obviously entrepreneurial mindset change agents, we're looking for change agents because, to your point, Haven, the playbook hasn't been written. You know, some days, I wish it was, right? Where you could pull it out. You could look at chapter five, and you could execute. We all know how to execute plays, but the playbook isn't written, and so you really need folks that are rooted in data, rooted in platform and building. We just are hiring some really great talent from retail media. 

We're hiring folks from the platforms that know how to build platform, that know how to advise on what are the right components that we need to build, that we need to license, that we might need to acquire? Right? I'm looking for folks that are rooted in automation and AI. We have an opportunity to start with a blank piece of paper in some cases, and so we need to be thinking about how we're using AI tools to generate the next version of development, so that's really important to me.

We also sit at the intersection. We're the next media company, and so we sit at this really interesting intersection of performance media and tech culture. And so, we want to bring folks that really understand both sides of that barbell, right, that really understand performance marketing, but also understand premium content and publishing, and know how to strike really important, you know, partnerships with our company.

We need folks that recognize the importance of relationships, and I actually do think that retail roots back to having really strong relationships with lots of different types of folks in the ecosystem. 

The other thing I would say is when you're building a team, you have to think about setting the table. Not every person has to have all the skills, but around the collective table. You need to have different, diverse perspectives. And I like to run my business around a table where we can share perspectives, we can teach, we can learn from each other. We can have different folks at a negotiation table. 

So, it's kind of exciting because as we think about like companies in this sector, companies like Best Buy, we get the opportunity, I'm going to go back to sports 'cause I know sports so well. I get to build the A team, right? I get to build the varsity team. I might take folks from the freshman team. I might take folks from different sports. You need to have partners. By the way, you both are really important partners to Best Buy. But it's a really interesting assignment, if you will, and I'm having a lot of fun building the team from that perspective.

Nicole Balsam: Well, love to hear it. Sounds like exactly the kind of creative challenge that gets us excited. So, you touched on this briefly, but I'd love to circle back on the question of generative AI. How are emerging technologies like gen AI affecting this space, and is there anything specific in terms of implications when it comes to talent needs?

Lisa Valentino: You know, we think about it in a couple of different ways. One, we're using AI increasingly to elevate both the customer and employee experience. So, as we think about the next generation of our app, we think about how AI delivers on that shopping experience. So that I think is really important as we think about the business side of things, we're using AI in a whole host of ways. 

The one that I'm most excited about—as we think about the next year, we think about how generative AI plays a role in creative automation. So, you'll see that come to life. Qs we get more into our marketplace platform, you'll see AI play a much bigger role in our marketplace and the platform that we're building to support that marketplace.

Our algorithms are all machine-based algorithms, so AI is really built front-end consumer experiences, backend, retail media, and how we're running the business, how we're running our commerce platform, how we're running our marketplace, which launches shortly. 

But there's also like—one of the other things I find is Best Buy's an enabler, right? At the end of the day, we enable commerce on behalf of lots of folks, and many of our vendors came to us over the last year or so and said, “We need your help telling the story.” Because customers like, we all live in it. You know, you guys myself, like we eat AI for breakfast. We're constantly learning about it. We're constantly testing. But the average consumer sits in a very different seat. 

And so, one of the things we did—it actually just launched about a month ago—is a co-branded marketing program called “AI That.” It's a play on our brand tagline, “Imagine that.” And it's what we do best, which is educate and enable, right? And so, this campaign, which is underway right now, debunks and demystifies and really plays up, like, how does AI impact your life every day? How do the simple things in life get better through the use of AI? And we have almost a dozen vendors participating. I think nine vendors are participating in that program, and that's something that will continue.

And so, there's a storytelling aspect because companies like ours—we're doers. Our heads are down, we're testing, we're piloting. But how do you pick your head up and like story tell that and make sure that the consumer on the other end of it, which is, at the end of the day, the most important thing.

So, as you can see, there's many use cases for how we're thinking about it from the customer all the way through to the enterprise. 

Haven Thompson: Great. Lisa, to wrap things up here, how do you see retail media networks continuing to evolve in 2025 and 2026? 

Lisa Valentino: Lots of things to share here. As I said earlier, standardization will be key.

I just joined the board of the IAB, their commerce board, and I can tell you there's—you know, with hundreds of retail media networks in the space—we need to be very disciplined about how we standardize. And by the way, this work has already started, so the work is well underway, but we need to make the business easier to scale.

I also think you're going to see a lot of collaboration happening across retail media networks. Think about worlds. We are doing a lot of work in clean rooms. We're doing a lot of data collaboration work. Imagine what starts to happen when retail media networks come together. And they share data in privacy-compliant environments where there's real benefit and value that can be exchanged with marketers and agencies and other parties.

So, I think you'll see a lot happening around standardization. We also have to think about differentiation. So, it can't just be a one-size-fits-all, but we have to think about how brands like Best Buy continue to differentiate its offering. We have 900 stores across the country. How do we really pioneer what in-store experiences could look like?

So, I think that's what you're going to start to see evolve over the next, you know, 12 to 24 months—this idea of standardization, but not at the expense of differentiation and continued innovation in the sector. 

Haven Thompson: Well, Lisa, thank you so much for your time today. This has been wonderful to connect with you on these topics, and we sincerely hope that you and Best Buy Ads have a great rest of the year.

Lisa Valentino: Thank you so much.

Thanks for listening to The Heidrick & Struggles Leadership Podcast. To make sure you don’t miss the next conversation, please subscribe to our channel on your preferred podcast app. And if you’re listening via LinkedIn or YouTube, why not share this with your connections? Until next time.

About the interviewers

Nicole Balsam (nbalsam@heidrick.com) is a principal in Heidrick & Struggles’ New York office and a member of the Consumer Markets Practice.

Haven Thompson (hthompson@heidrick.com) is a partner in Heidrick & Struggles’ New York office and a member of the Global Technology & Services Practice.