AI Shopping: LLMs are the funnel

AI tools like ChatGPT and Claude will soon collapse the customer journey into a single conversation, and brands need a whole new media strategy to own them.

On a hot, Arizona day in March 2026, Exverus VP of Performance Marketing Hillary Kupferberg took the stage to tell a roomful of marketers and media buyers: You're behind.

She was talking about the dawn of AI shopping, or agentic commerce, a process in which consumers turn to AI chatbots like Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, or Perplexity for product recommendations, and an AI shopping agent fills their basket. It's the future (no, the present reality) of e-commerce, and brand marketers need to adapt their marketing strategies quickly.

When the whole product discovery-to-purchase pathway is collapsed into a single chatbot conversation, traditional advertising tactics like Paid Search driving clicks to a website become irrelevant. Let Hillary explain:

Zero-click Search Marketing

We're entering a world where better marketing produces worse-looking Search metrics.

One of our CPG brands saw a 30% decline clicks to site but were actually winning and gaining share in AI overviews. Brands relying on website clicks today to measure their success are actually falling behind, and your marketing is looking worse.

So, we need to measure differently. We all know the old terms of share of voice, but what we're quickly finding is that in order to win today, you actually need to be looking at share of model. Is your brand or your product being cited and mentioned in these LLMS?

The reason this matters is, if we evaluate all these new forms of technology under our own old models, we're going to lose. Now we're marketing to AI and consumers. So we really are thinking about this differently today, rewriting success.

And when we look at all the new new traffic sources, where are leads coming from? Is it ChatGPT? Is it Copilot? Is it Gemini? These things matter. Reddit is a huge one that's really powerful. For one of our brands, we were able to identify that [Reddit] is the third most visible domain on Google, and that's pulling into all of the AI Overviews.

Agentic commerce

On Amazon Prime Day, we saw a 3,000% increase of GenAI traffic to Amazon. That's huge! And we really entered a tipping point that is quickly transforming the commerce world.

The point of sale is now inside the conversation.

Discovery is happening within all of these conversations. And if you think about the first prompt you ever gave AI, "I need a new pair of sneakers" is very different than how I talk to AI now and likely you do, as well. Really in-depth prompts about exactly what type of

hiking shoe I need, that it needs to fit in my carry-on, I want them to be waterproof, only in blue. These are the types of information that customers are giving; they're having deep conversations with AI to find the right products.

They're not visiting your website, but ultimately what we're seeing with retailers and commerce partners actively partnering with OpenAI is the future of retail and e-commerce. Conversational AI is a new purchase channel. As of very recently, we can

start to buy ads there.

But even without paid media, this is a really important tool for your brands to be thinking about because AI is predicting, recommending, and ultimately completing the transactions all within that chat.

The retailers, as they continue to partner with OpenAI, will have really strong purchase data that isn't happening on your brand site.

And we see that people are really leaned in. 63% of users are doing this for research and discovery, and 53% take it a step further and compare products and prices.

So everything from your search to your retail PDPs need to be specifically consistent and translate to the AI so the AI models can mention and cite your brands and your products when relevant.

Actionable Takeaways

I encourage you all to take pictures of this slide because these are tangible things you can bring back to your organization to introduce new ways of measuring success in this agentic commerce world.

And just remember that if your organization is still measuring clicks, you're a little bit behind. But the good news is we're here to help.

FAQs about AI shopping

Q: I loved your insight about Reddit and how brands could get some leverage there. Jay Walker Smith [of MediaPost] wrote a piece recently that the number one source of expert information on the LLMs is Reddit. Number two is Wikipedia. Is that dumbing down the expertise, and is there going to be kind of backlash for brands who are using LLMs for, how should I say, less than perfect information?

A: Definitely. It's it really is the wild west. I can't predict what will happen, but I think it's a "both/and situation" between what's happening on Reddit and Wikipedia (more of that user-generated [content]), plus what the brand is putting out. So you have to do both to in order to succeed. And so it does take a lot to be commerce-ready and visible and consistent across many different touch points where the formats are different. How people want to consume the information is different, but brands that are paying attention to both I think will be ahead.

Q. The relationship between AI and search is undeniable in terms of the level of disruption there. I'm curious what you're seeing in the ripples with programmatic and display as well, because if that whole behavior and model shifts where people aren't searching online, and we're not retargeting them, and going through that traditional funnel, what are the recommendations, or where do you see programmatic moving with AI now?

A. I think programmatic will take a lot of signals from what we're seeing and learning honestly with search as new releases are happening, in terms of product, and what the actual ad formats available will be, and it'll change over time. Again, I don't think it's replacing what we've seen. A lot of fears around volume of search decreasing didn't actually come to play; volume of search is actually up, but how people are consuming and ultimately getting the information is just resulting in less clicks. So, what we're expecting in the programmatic space is even more innovation in terms of ad formats and similar results in terms of expectations around click-based performance.

Q. I'm excited now that you said we will soon be making a purchase within an AI platform, and I'm just curious, can you share anything about like a personal purchase that you found very smooth through an AI platform?

A. Definitely. Walmart is doing it really well. [Adoption] is low right now. We're at about 8% of people are actually transacting within ChatGPT. I think there's still concerns around adoption and trust. So, giving ChatGPT your credit card is the default, but actually you're giving Walmart your credit card. Purchases that I've made are pretty boring, but mostly in the grocery category.

For further reference

• Watch Hillary's presentation video: MediaPost Live on YouTube. "The New Path from Discovery to Digital Shelf." March 2026.

  
  

• For more on personalization in AI shopping: EMARKETER. "How AI has remade product pages, discovery, and personalization." March 2026.

  
  

• For different retailers' offerings: ADWEEK. "Walmart and Target Are Battling to Show Up in AI Shopping Tools. Here's How Their Strategies Compare." March 2026.

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About the Author

Hillary Kupferberg is the VP of Performance Marketing at Exverus by Brainlabs where she holistically oversees the agency's robust retail media and

e-commerce team, programmatic advertising, paid search, and paid social teams. Over a decade-plus in advertising, Hillary's expertise has expanded to meet each new technological innovation, bridging gaps between channels for the strongest possible returns. Previously, Hillary served as Director of Digital Strategy for top luxury brands, winning industry awards and speaking at conferences like IAB.

Follow her on LinkedIn