This marks the beginning of agentic commerce, where consumers rely on intelligent assistants to find, compare, and buy for them. The shift is already underway, driven by AI browsers and a wave of new consumer behaviors that are reshaping how decisions get made.
From Destination to Default
AI is no longer something people visit. It’s becoming part of everything they do online. New browsers like OpenAI’s Atlas and Perplexity’s Comet integrate AI directly into how people navigate the web. These tools can summarize pages, compare products, and even take actions on behalf of users.
Search, discovery, and purchase are merging into a single experience. AI has stopped being a separate tool and started becoming the fabric of the browsing experience.
Consumers Are Already Adopting It
The data shows how quickly behavior is shifting. According to Klaviyo’s Global AI Shopping Index:
– 78% of consumers have used AI for shopping or product research in the past three months.
– 56% plan to use AI assistants for Black Friday or Cyber Monday this year.
– 75% have abandoned a purchase because they couldn’t get an instant answer.
– By 2026, 65% expect AI shopping assistants to be standard.
People aren’t browsing websites the way they used to, They’re asking AI to browse for them.
Agentic Shopping Has Arrived
OpenAI just made this shift real. With Instant Checkout inside ChatGPT, users can now buy Etsy products without leaving the chat. The system runs on the Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP), co-developed with Stripe. Products are ranked by relevance, not sponsorship, and merchants keep full control over fulfillment.
The next phase includes multi-item carts and Shopify integration, which will connect millions of merchants including Glossier and SKIMS directly into ChatGPT. Chat-based shopping isn’t an idea anymore. It’s here.
Why Shoppers Love It
People want less friction and more confidence when they shop.
– 36% use AI to find better deals.
– 17% use it to save time.
– 14% use it for personalized recommendations.
By 2030, 40% expect AI to help them save money regularly. AI simplifies the decision process, reduces clutter, and gives shoppers confidence that they’re making the right choice.
What It Means for Brands and Marketers
The way consumers discover and choose products is being rewritten. The new gatekeepers aren’t search engines or social platforms, they’re AI agents.
1. Visibility Depends on Data, Not Ad Spend: Agentic systems surface products based on relevance, trust, and data accuracy. Structured product feeds, real-time inventory, transparent pricing, and reliable fulfillment will determine visibility.
2. Brand Trust Becomes the Tie-Breaker: When an agent shows only a few recommendations, people default to what they already recognize. Brand equity becomes a key advantage.
3. Measurement Must Evolve: As purchases happen inside chat experiences, click-based attribution will lose value. Marketers will need server-side tracking, incrementality testing, and more advanced modeling to understand what drives performance.
4. Operations and Marketing Converge: Feed quality, shipping speed, and customer support will influence agent rankings as much as creative or targeting. How well a brand operates will affect how often it appears.
Competing for Agent Visibility
The next competition won’t be about keyword rankings or ad auctions. It will be about earning trust with the systems that decide what people see.
To stay ahead:
Structure your data and content so AI systems can interpret it.
Build credible signals through reviews and transparency.
Strengthen brand recognition so that when the agent presents options, yours is the name people choose.
AI is collapsing the customer journey into a single moment of intent. Millions of shoppers will soon rely on agents to handle everything from research to checkout, and by 2026, they’ll expect every brand to participate.
Marketers need to shift now.
Stop building for search engines and start building for the intelligent agents that shape what shoppers see next. The brands that adapt first won’t just be discovered, they’ll be chosen automatically.
VP of Strategy, Jackson Richards
