The AI Tsunami in Here: Will You Dive In Or Get Left Behind? with Stephen Howard-Sarin from Criteo
In this episode of the Ecommert Podcast, we sit down with Stephen Howard-Sarin, Managing Director of North America for Criteo , at the Commerce Media Brands Summit in Atlanta . We explore the massive reinvention happening in the retail media landscape—from solving buy-side fragmentation to the explosion of AI-driven conversational commerce. Stephen shares his journey of over a decade in commerce media, having built giant advertising businesses at eBay, Walmart Connect, and Instacart before joining Criteo . We discuss why the industry is shifting away from trade spend constraints, the reality of shopping within Large Language Models (LLMs), and how brands must prepare for a future where product discovery starts with a picture rather than a keyword. In this episode, you'll learn:
🔹 The Retail Media Reinvention: Why the industry is shifting toward buy-side tool consolidation, allowing brands to seamlessly manage campaigns and reach audiences across multiple retail networks.
🔹 Trade Spend vs. True Media: The defining line of retail advertising—"it's not advertising if the advertiser can't say no"—and how brands are capping trade investments to focus on real media ROI.
🔹 The AI Checkout Delusion: Unpacking the Silicon Valley myth around LLM checkouts, with predictions that only 2% of e-commerce transactions will actually happen inside an AI chat by 2029.
🔹 Picture vs. Keyword: How multimodal AI is fundamentally changing product discovery, moving from traditional search terms to contextual, image-based conversations.
🔹 The AI "Black Box": The new challenges of closed-loop attribution when consumer discovery and consideration happen through ambiguous chatbot conversations before the actual purchase.
About the Guest: Stephen Howard-Sarin is the Managing Director of North America for Criteo . With over a decade of pioneering experience in the commerce media space, Stephen has played pivotal roles in building and scaling giant advertising businesses at eBay, Walmart Connect, and Instacart . At Criteo, he focuses on turning complex retail media fragmentation and the rise of conversational AI into scalable growth strategies for brands and retailers alike.
🌐 More insights: https://www.ecommert.ai
Mert Damlapinar | ecommert
About ecommert:
We partner with CPG businesses and leading technology companies of all sizes to accelerate growth through AI-driven digital commerce solutions. Our expertise spans e-channel strategy, retail media optimization, and digital shelf analytics, ensuring smarter and more efficient operations across B2C, eB2B, and DTC channels.
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