Agentic commerce: A guide for brands

Google's Gemini offers virtual try-on for clothes shoppers.

The new brand discovery channel

In 2026, product recommendations from Generative AI platforms like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Amazon's "Buy For Me" are no longer experimental—they're fully operational.

And over the next few years, agentic commerce will evolve the whole shopping experience.

The question isn't whether your customers will use AI agents to shop – it's whether your brand will be the one they recommend.

What is agentic commerce?

Agentic commerce, or agentic shopping, is shopping online powered by AI agents acting on humans' behalf. These AI agents could be embedded into generative AI platforms and/or retailers' own e-commerce sites, automatically recommending or purchasing products based on the human's needs and parameters.

What is an example of agentic commerce?

To borrow an example from McKinsey,

"Imagine that a promising new job opportunity requires you to relocate your family across the country....You need to find a comfortable home with a manageable commute, decide what to bring and what to sell, and engage a trustworthy moving company to deliver everything on time. Then there’s the issue of finding new doctors, veterinarians for the pets, a gym, and after-school programs for the kids. It’s overwhelming.

Now imagine that you had an autonomous AI agent to handle these tasks for you. With a deep understanding of your budget, lifestyle, commute preferences, kids’ hobbies, and even your pets’ needs, the agent can get to work. To research neighborhoods and housing options, it synthesizes data from multiple sites and platforms, scanning myriad real estate listings and recommending the most appealing choices. When you e-sign your lease, the agent reviews the terms to ensure anything atypical is highlighted and gets your attention."

The possibilities are truly infinite. One day soon, AI agents could:

• automatically research and book travel

• schedule appointments

• help with supply chain logistics, and so much more!

What should marketers know about agentic commerce?

It completely reshapes the customer journey.

Instead of starting a product search on Amazon and a flight search on Priceline, for example, consumers could use AI chatbots as the starting point for everything.

This means that, instead of splitting your media spend between "brand-building" and "performance driving" channels, you'll need to build omnichannel ecosystems that an AI agent can easily understand.

As of 2026, most retail media spending still occurs onsite (mostly on sponsored search and product listings).

But that model breaks down when discovery shifts upstream to AI agents who filter and recommend brands without shoppers even needing to visit a retailer or website.

The path to purchase will collapse into an instant, and so will data collection and learnings for brands.

There is, however, a risk of losing visibility over the customer journey.

As Forbes points out, "While orders may be attributed to ChatGPT, Gemini, or other LLMs, merchants are largely in the dark about everything that happened before the transaction."

Winning at agentic commerce requires product data quality, structured content, and creative assets designed for AI comprehension, not just search rankings. 

How can brands get recommended by AI agents? 

1. Ensure your site is visible to each major GenAI tool

For example, ChatGPT uses a web crawler called OAI-SearchBot to find, access, and surface information in ChatGPT search. For your site to be discoverable in ChatGPT, make sure you aren't blocking OAI-SearchBot. You may need to update your robots.txt file, to ensure OAI-SearchBot has access.

For Anthropic's Claude, log into your claude.ai account. Access your profile settings. Look for the Web Search feature and toggle it on if it's currently disabled.

Other GenAI tools like Perplexity and Google's Gemini may have their own processes for ensuring searchability.

2. Become a trusted source of information

Build your brand authority as a reputable source that AI chatbots will want to reference. This cannot be done by simply buying placements in AI answers. It has to be earned through positive publicity, good reviews/referrals, and producing informative content.

More on how to do that below:

Building your owned content and public reputation for maximum AI visibility will organically increase the likelihood of AI agents recommending your products.

3. Feed your products directly to the bots

ChatGPT launched brand plugins back in 2023 so the bot could relay accurate, up-to-date brand information directly to searchers asking questions.

Now, you can provide product feeds directly to ChatGPT to potentially show up as a recommendation. OpenAI's submission periods open and close, so sign up here to be notified of the next opening.

4. Audit your product data infrastructure

When deciding which products to recommend, GenAI tools scan the structured metadata of product pages (product description, price, etc.) and third-party reviews for its summaries.

This means your copy needs to be thorough, informative, and highlight key features that searchers might be looking for (budget-friendly, limited time only, sustainable, etc.)

Are your SKUs tagged with deep attributes (price, size, ingredients, ESG scores)? Is your catalog synchronized in real-time across all retail partners?

Also, as website content becomes more Q&A-style and less keyword-based, so should your product copy and media messaging. Anticipate likely questions and answer them naturally to get recognized by AI platforms.

AI can help marketers with copywriting, supply chain inventory, personalization, customer service, and more.

"Visual search is growing, especially among younger users, so don't neglect your image SEO.

Keep your product photos fresh and appealing, with thoroughly descriptive image descriptions, captions, and alt text.

These steps will help users discover your brand content." -- Michael Robbins, Exverus Associate Director of Search & Social

The choice is simple: adapt your retail media strategy for an agent-first world, or watch your share of voice—and share of cart—get algorithmically optimized away.

Need help?

The retail media & e-commerce media buying experts at Exverus know how to keep brands top-of-mind and added to baskets everywhere. 

For further reference:

• McKinsey. https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/quantumblack/our-insights/the-agentic-commerce-opportunity-how-ai-agents-are-ushering-in-a-new-era-for-consumers-and-merchants

• Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/claraludmir/2026/02/16/agentic-commerce-adoption-is-inevitable-and-resisting-it-may-not-be-an-option/

• Google Cloud. https://cloud.google.com/transform/agentic-commerce-retailers-can-prepare-for-the-new-shopping-era-ai

---

This piece originally appeared in our weekly Paid Media Insights newsletter.

For more tips, research, and analysis; subscribe for free here.