Unlocked with Austin and Elizabeth
Unlocked with Austin and Elizabeth
Podcast Description
Hosted by Austin Leonard and Elizabeth Donovan, this podcast takes you behind the scenes of the third wave of advertising—where digital innovation, brand storytelling, and data-driven strategies collide. Featuring candid conversations with the industry insiders who lived it, we uncover the real stories, game-changing moments, and lessons learned from the frontlines of modern marketing.
Podcast Insights
Content Themes
The podcast covers themes around digital marketing innovation, brand storytelling, and retail media networks, with episodes featuring discussions on leadership strategies in retail media commerce, the evolution of digital advertising, and insights into navigating modern marketing challenges.
Hosted by Austin Leonard and Elizabeth Donovan, this podcast takes you behind the scenes of the third wave of advertising—where digital innovation, brand storytelling, and data-driven strategies collide. Featuring candid conversations with the industry insiders who lived it, we uncover the real stories, game-changing moments, and lessons learned from the frontlines of modern marketing.
What does a degree in Rhetoric do for your career? (Plus How Retail Media’s Data Problem Is Holding the Industry Back) with Stephen Howard-Sarin
What does it actually take to build a retail media business from the ground up, not once, but across some of the biggest names in the industry? Master Orator Stephen Howard-Sarin has done it at eBay, Walmart, Instacart, and Criteo, and he joins Austin and Elizabeth to share what he has learned along the way.
From dirty product catalogs hiding in plain sight to the buy-side’s trade spend hangover slowing down scale, Stephen pulls no punches on where retail media still gets it wrong. He also makes the case for why fragmentation is a mental limit more than a real one, and why an ounce of patience might be worth more than all the AI in the room.
Tune in to this episode as we explore:
(04:23) Stephen’s early commerce media days at eBay
(06:00) How eBay’s data exhaust became an ad business
(08:27) Building Walmart Connect from the ground up
(09:41) Launching Carrot Ads at Instacart from scratch
(15:00) Why retail media data sets are often a mess
(18:11) Fragmentation is a mindset problem, not a math problem
(19:33) The buy-side’s trade spend hangover slowing scale
(25:19) Why the customer purchase moment is zero-sum
(28:08) Career lessons, bombs, and leading through failure
(31:04) Stephen’s retail commerce executive survival kit
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