If you’re like me, you find the emergence of AI-enabled search agents to be exciting and terrifying at the same time: “exciting” as a person who really needs a personal assistant sometimes to help me through the week, but “terrifying” as a commerce marketer faced with the prospect of losing direct contact with shoppers.
I’ve been using one particular agent a lot recently. It helped plan a complete itinerary for a trip to Ireland with my sons in record time, and it handled much of the initial time-consuming research I needed to prepare a new healthcare regimen. We’ve done a little shopping together, too, although we haven’t made any direct purchases just yet.
I’m not alone, of course. Adoption levels have already reached a surprising maturation point already. People of all ages are using conversational agents not just as an alternative to standard search engines but to help make informed choices about solutions for their daily lives.
That includes shopping: A consumer study recently published by our colleagues at Publicis Commerce and EMARKETER found that shoppers who’ve already adopted the tools are using them on nearly half of their shopping occasions — and nearly one in five are starting their trips on agentic platforms.
The study also found that nearly half (49%) of these shoppers are willing to switch brands based on the agent’s recommendations, which is one reason why this trend might sound a little terrifying for commerce marketers. And the idea that these agents may someday build enough trust with shoppers that they’ll bypass the recommendation stage entirely and make purchases on their own makes it far more frightening.
Whether or not that will ever happen among a significant percentage of shoppers is up for debate. But it’s clear from the study that, for now, shoppers haven’t reached that level of trust. In fact, two-thirds of respondents to the study believe that agent recommendations exhibit some level of bias.
In our little corner of the marketing world as commerce marketers, we’re constantly talking about the need to balance art and science when building brands and driving conversion. The emergence of agentic commerce is bringing that conversation to a head: How can we reimagine the shopping experiences we create for our clients so their brands will shine through in agent recommendations?
That question isn’t entirely new to commerce marketers. It’s similar to the one we had to ask back when digital ad spending started shifting heavily toward search. Then, the critical question was how to optimize brand content on retailer websites (and elsewhere) so it would be keyword search-ready. Now, we need to figure out how to be agent recommendation-ready.
The good news, according to the study, is that the solutions in both cases are largely the same, which is evident in the behavior of those surveyed shoppers: After getting the agent’s recommendation, 60% of respondents search for more information elsewhere, with nearly one-third (29%) immediately visiting a relevant product page to get the additional details needed to make their purchase decision.
So, if the starting point for these new-era shoppers is to get recommendations about a few brands from the agent, but then complete their decision-making on a brand or retailer website themselves, brand strategy doesn’t need to be all that different — or all that terrifying.
It will certainly require a clear understanding of the content elements these search agents rely on to determine their recommendations, although most of the industry analysis so far points to the same sources that already influence ecommerce purchase decisions in general: ratings & reviews, retailer PDPs, social media, even brand websites.
On a deeper level, it will require greater rigor around brand building. We’ll need to break down a brand’s core elements to fully understand how they align with the needs of shoppers as expressed through the questions they’re asking agents. Doing that will require brands to more rigorously examine their audiences, to identify the problems they’re asking agents to solve.
At Arc, we’re fortunate to have resources like the identity-driven consumer insights database of Publicis Groupe partner Epsilon to help us get that level of understanding. We already do this kind work in some product categories to develop stronger engagement strategies for clients, although we’ll now need to factor in the nuances involved with agents becoming part of the equation.
Granted, as the technology improves and search agents become more sophisticated and knowledgeable, there likely will be more channel convergence and consumers will probably start buying directly from these platforms — and yes, in some cases maybe even letting them make the purchase decision. That’s when brands will need to find ways of bringing their experiences directly into these platforms.
Until then, we can continue developing connected, relevant brand experiences that help shoppers find solutions wherever they might be looking for them — even on agentic search platforms. For commerce marketers, that should sound like an exciting, far less “terrifying” proposition.
As agentic search continues to evolve, the opportunity for brands isn’t to fight it, it’s to understand it, shape it, and show up meaningfully within it. Now is the moment to take a closer look at how your brand is represented across the signals these systems rely on. And we can help with that.
Let’s talk about where there’s room to strengthen clarity, relevance and trust.
