As artificial intelligence increasingly shapes consumer behavior, brands and retailers are adapting their marketing strategies to appeal not just to human shoppers but to the AI agents shopping on their behalf. With tools from companies like Meta and OpenAI enabling automated assistants to browse and purchase products, businesses are rethinking how to position their offerings in this emerging "agentic commerce" landscape.
Recent data illustrate a sharp rise in AI-driven traffic on retail websites. According to a report from Adobe, visits from AI agents to U.S. retail sites surged by nearly 400 percent in 2026. Analysts predict this trend will continue, with Morgan Stanley estimating that by 2030, AI-influenced spending could represent up to $385 billion annually, or approximately 20 percent of total U.S. e-commerce sales.
This shift requires a new marketing approach. Aviv Shammy, CEO of Limy, an AI search platform backed by Andreessen Horowitz, explained that marketing to AI agents involves appealing to logic and data-driven algorithms rather than human emotions and attention. AI agents evaluate products through mathematical models that parse content into numerical representations, necessitating more structured and detailed product information.
Retailers are investing in technology that makes their offerings more accessible and comprehensible to AI systems. The RTA Store, a family-owned online cabinetry business, confronted a decline in visibility on large language model recommendations, prompting them to hire New Generation, a San Francisco-based startup specializing in transforming product catalogs into AI-friendly formats. This process involved revamping website code, adding AI-powered inquiry widgets, and expanding product descriptions with precise, factual information favored by AI algorithms.
Similarly, Caelean Barnes, founder of Gauge, highlights that AI agents prioritize extensive, straightforward content rich in statistics and factual details. To assist brands in this transition, New Generation, in partnership with Visa, developed a scoring system that simulates AI agents’ interaction with websites, measuring how effectively these AI shoppers can navigate and retrieve information on various online platforms. This assessment aims to identify and rectify potential barriers that could interrupt an automated purchase journey.
The technical underpinnings of this new marketing frontier include analyzing how AI systems translate language into vector spaces—a numerical format capturing semantic meaning. Limy leverages this approach to identify the “most valuable prompts” that are likely to lead to conversions, enabling brands to optimize their content accordingly.
However, some experts urge caution regarding rapidly evolving AI models. Toby Coulthard, founder of Jacquard, warns that current marketing tactics aimed at exploiting AI behavior may become outdated quickly due to the fast pace of change, advocating for a focus on fundamental marketing principles rather than short-lived techniques.
Industry observers note similarities between the AI commerce shift and previous transformations such as mobile commerce and search engine optimization, where early movers gained advantages that later became normalized. Akshat Trivedi, analyst at FTI Consulting, suggests that in the near future, product launches and brand discoverability may be influenced heavily by AI-driven preferences and naming conventions.
For businesses like the RTA Store, adapting to this AI-driven landscape comes with increasing costs. CEO Tyler Ackerman anticipates spending up to $12,000 monthly to maintain visibility among AI shoppers, underscoring the growing importance of aligning marketing efforts with intelligent agent behavior as these systems advance.
As the role of AI agents in consumer purchasing grows, companies face a pivotal challenge: evolving their marketing strategies to meet the demands of a new, automated decision-maker whose preferences are measured less by emotion and more by data-driven logic.