Agentic Commerce: When AI Agents Shop for Us
How do we promote products when machines do our shopping for us? The iab NETwork event at our office provided exciting answers to this and other questions. Experts discussed the future of online shopping and highlighted how Agentic Commerce will drastically transform digital commerce in just a few years.
We had the pleasure of hosting the second iab NETwork event of the year, and our Vienna office was packed to the brim. Stephanie Mauerer, Director of Client Service & Consulting at e-dialog and a member of the iab austria Board of Directors, summed up our shared goal perfectly: We discuss technological developments at the very moment they begin to transform markets in a lasting way. Following an insightful keynote by Stefan Eibl (University of Applied Sciences Wiener Neustadt), our Marketing Director Markus Widmer led an inspiring panel discussion. Together with Iris Handlsberger (e-dialog), Marie-Sophie Kames-Klingenbrunner (IBM iX), and Mijat Pejic (MediaMarkt), we addressed the challenge of how companies must position themselves for the era of AI assistants.
Photo credit: Ingo Folie
Online Shopping with AI: What It Means When Agents Shop for Us
The technology for checkout via AI agents has long been in the starting blocks. The panel agreed: Within two to five years at most, agentic commerce will be firmly embedded in the everyday lives of our consumers. From the discussions, we’ve taken away three key insights for practical application:
- First, data quality is becoming the absolute priority. In the future, when “agent talks to agent,” retailers and brands will need to clean up their data and ensure that product feeds are fully machine-readable.
- Second, the “messy middle” of the sales funnel is shifting increasingly toward AI chats. As a result, the decision-making process becomes less tangible, and digital brand management becomes significantly more fragmented. Iris Handlsberger (Director of Media Consulting & Campaign Strategy, e-dialog) emphasized: “In the future, we will no longer just need to reach end customers, but specifically target their digital assistants.”
- Third, content marketing is becoming massively more relevant, as agentic commerce remains a black box for many. Brands must be present and visible exactly where AI systems source their information. Those who create transparency and trust here will gain a clear competitive advantage in the digital commerce of the future.”