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.