This is Sarah.
By Melissa Burdick · July 28, 2026 · Curated by George's Blog
This is Sarah.
Who is she?
Your customer.
And here’s how she shops: She discovers your product on TikTok. Asks ChatGPT about it. Checks Reddit to see what real customers think. Later, she sees it again while watching Prime Video. Searches Google for where she can buy it locally. Hears friends talking about it at her workout class. Then, on her commute home, she finally buys it on Amazon.
Her path to purchase is a tornado of touchpoints, and every single one matters.
Sarah’s journey is easy. She moves between hundreds of retail media networks, CTV pathways, social channels, and search options effortlessly. But everything that makes Sarah’s journey seamless is exactly what’s leaving brands fragmented.
The funnel is gone, and it’s been replaced by a Commerce Grid: a three-dimensional map, where every channel and every format can play at every stage. As commerce media expands exponentially, the grid is how brands can shift from asking “Is this an awareness channel?” to the real question every team wants to answer: “What is this channel actually driving?”
But how do you get there?
That’s exactly what Pacvue's Luke Balestri is presenting on at Cornell University's OmniCommerce Leadership program.
According to Luke (and I agree), the fix is a new operating model that revolves around:
• One number: Every team optimizing to the same metric that ties directly to profit, instead of each function chasing its own KPI while EBIT slips.
• One budget: A single, flexible pool that flows to wherever the return is highest, instead of media set in January and trade set in March by teams that never talk to each other.
• One owner: A single person accountable for the consumer and the profit, instead of eight people owning eight different channels.
Get those three things right, and suddenly your strategy starts to flow the same way Sarah shops.
I’m grateful that The CPG Guys and Cornell are opening up space for this conversation, because it’s one of the most important in our industry right now.