There are people who talk about “seamless omnichannel experiences” like they’re selling essential oils. Then there’s Stephen Howard-Sarin, who walks into the room, looks at the chaos of modern retail media, and says flatly: “Seamless is out of reach right now.”

That’s the kind of honesty this industry needs tattooed on its dashboard.

Howard-Sarin isn’t theorizing from the cheap seats. He’s spent more than a decade actually building the architecture of retail media — from eBay Ads to Walmart Connect, Instacart, and now Criteo — shaping the playbook that brands and retailers pretend to have already read. He understands what everyone in retail media eventually learns the hard way: connecting brands and shoppers is hard. You have to understand each on their own before you can ever hope to connect them.

“In retail media, the shoppers come first,” Howard-Sarin reminds us, with the tone of someone who’s watched too many brands forget that simple fact. Every retail media network, he says, is trying to surround the shopper across their journey — in-store, online, off-site — with consistent, contextual messages that actually mean something. That’s the dream. The problem? Most brands and retailers are still tripping over the wiring trying to make it happen.

The industry loves to pretend this is a data problem. It’s not. It’s a people problem — a cultural problem — and Howard-Sarin knows it. “For most retailers,” he explains, “building an RMN is a talent problem, a technology problem, and a little bit of a culture problem.” Translation: you can’t buy a shortcut to maturity. You can’t automate leadership.

Retailers are learning to be media companies while under crushing revenue expectations. The pressure is constant, he says — the trade-off between short-term growth and long-term capability “is something they struggle with every single day.”

Howard-Sarin doesn’t romanticize technology, either. When asked what tech partners should actually do for brands, he doesn’t rattle off buzzwords about AI or precision targeting. He talks about something more practical: executional coherence.

He breaks it down: “Technology providers have to hit the customer where they are — in-store with audio and video screens, online with in-app and on-site placements, off-site with dynamic creative and attribution.” Then, with that perfectly dry delivery: “We’ve got some wood to chop on that part.”

That’s code for: the tools aren’t ready, the infrastructure isn’t aligned, and the buyer experience is still a mess. But at least he’s acknowledging it. The real work isn’t adding more “AI-driven personalization layers.” It’s building systems — APIs, self-serve UIs, integrations — that let agencies and brands operate without losing their sanity.

Howard-Sarin’s greatest hits always come with a dose of humility and humor. Take his riff on ad formats: “Your cereal box is doing all the work for you.” It’s both funny and devastatingly accurate.

The reality, he says, is that a product listing — no matter how cleverly sponsored — can’t tell the whole story. You need video, display, and richer experiences to explain why your brand matters before the shopper scrolls past. “If you want people to know what’s in that box and why it’s different than the box right next to it, you need all these other formats,” he explains.

And while video remains king for storytelling, the real goal is alignment — “pulling formats all the way from social video to on-site experiences so they actually line up.” Because only then do you get the “seamless brand experience” everyone keeps pretending already exists.

Howard-Sarin’s worldview could be carved into three laws:

When he says, “We charge rent on a house we don’t own,” it’s not a joke — it’s the guiding principle of retail media. The retailer controls the experience, the brand foots the bill, and both sides are learning how to coexist under the same roof without burning it down.

And that’s the thing about Howard-Sarin — he’s not peddling the next shiny solution. He’s building a map for survival in an ecosystem that’s still under construction.

Retail media isn’t seamless. It’s stitched together with human ambition, spreadsheets, and caffeine. But if anyone’s making sense of it — and making it worth doing — it’s Stephen Howard-Sarin.