Stephen Howard-Sarin

Stephen Howard-Sarin has spent 10-plus years operating at the intersection of commerce and advertising and is currently the Managing Director of Retail Media Americas at Criteo. He leads a fantastic team that owns retail media partnerships with dozens of retailers and thousands of brands. Previously, he was VP of Retail Media at Instacart and VP of Strategy & Transformation at Walmart, where he architected the company’s expansion in advertising starting in 2017. Stephen earned his programmatic stripes at eBay Advertising before that, as Senior Director of Sales, Marketing & Analytics. Throughout his career, Howard-Sarin has helped build hypergrowth ad businesses adjacent to core commerce. Transaction-based first-party data fuels ideal marketing outcomes, but advertising is not a core competency of most commerce companies. There are significant gaps in culture, talent and technology that hamper retailers from becoming great at advertising – and Stephen loves to build bridges across those gaps.