Jeremy Goldman

The ecommerce industry has spent years arguing about what the future looks like. 2026's Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) Connected Commerce Summit made clear that the future has already arrived — and most organizations are not ready for it.

When retail leaders discuss shrink, the spotlight usually falls on shoplifting, organized retail crime, or external theft. Headlines reinforce this focus. Security budgets follow it.

The argument about whether AI will fundamentally reshape retail commerce is finished. Not because the technology has matured to the point of certainty—it hasn't—but because the practitioners have.

The smart money in quick-service marketing fled linear TV for streaming's precision targeting. Burger King ran the other way, and the numbers say it was right.

The company that defined prestige beauty for eight decades just admitted, on a Shoptalk stage, that understanding the consumer was the easy part. The hard part was the one it kept losing: speed.

Published RETHINK Retail There is a particular kind of retail moment that doesn't feel like retail at all. It's actually a kind of magic.