Retail media networks (RMNs) are poised to undergo a significant transformation as they incorporate an agentic commerce strategy. Agentic commerce refers to a future where autonomous AI agents, acting on behalf of consumers, will handle the entire shopping journey, from product discovery to purchase and even returns. This shift will fundamentally change how RMNs operate and how brands advertise.
Here’s a breakdown of how RMNs will incorporate an agentic commerce strategy:
1. The Shift from Human-Centric to AI-Centric Advertising
Traditional RMNs have focused on serving ads to human shoppers based on their browsing and purchase history. In an agentic commerce world, the primary “shopper” will often be an algorithm. This means RMNs and the brands that use them will need to adapt their strategies to influence these AI agents.
- Metadata over Creative: Instead of relying on eye-catching banner ads and creative content to persuade human shoppers, brands will need to optimize their product listings with rich, structured data (metadata).7 This data, including detailed attributes, pricing, loyalty perks, and ESG scores, will be what AI agents “scrape” and use to make purchasing decisions.
- Negotiation over Persuasion: AI agents will be able to engage in real-time price negotiations.9 RMNs will need to develop APIs that allow brands to deliver real-time offers and discounts directly to shopping agents at checkout.
- New Ad Formats: The standard ad formats of today, like sponsored products on search results pages, will become less important. RMNs will need to integrate sponsored products seamlessly into chat-like, personalized recommendation experiences driven by AI. Display and video ads will also need to evolve from fixed placements to being natively integrated into these new, more immersive user experiences.
2. Redefining Ad Delivery and Measurement
Agentic commerce will also change how ads are delivered and measured.
- Convergence of Organic and Paid: RMNs will move away from using siloed technology for organic product recommendations and sponsored ads.15 Instead, they will use a common logic across both to deliver personalized experiences that blend optimization for the retailer’s, brand’s, and shopper’s goals.
- Performance-Based Pricing: The shift in focus from impressions and clicks to actual conversions driven by AI agents will likely lead RMNs to adopt new budget models, such as cost-per-agent conversion.
- Unified Experiences: Since AI agents will operate across various channels (websites, apps, voice assistants, etc.), RMNs will need to break down internal silos to ensure a consistent experience. Product details, pricing, and promotions must be fully aligned across all platforms.
3. The New Importance of Data and Infrastructure
To enable agentic commerce, RMNs will need to invest in their underlying data and technology infrastructure.
- Structured Data and APIs: A key imperative for retailers will be to reorganize their product catalogs into machine-readable formats and expose real-time inventory and fulfillment data via clean APIs. This ensures that AI agents can access the necessary information to make informed decisions.
- Loyalty as a Data Point: Loyalty data and rewards will become a crucial currency in the agentic era. RMNs and brands must make sure their loyalty perks are visible and accessible to AI agents, as these benefits can be factored into an agent’s purchasing decision.
- Optimization for Bots: Just as brands once optimized their content for search engines (SEO), they will now need to engage in “Generative Engine Optimization” (GEO) to ensure their products are optimally discoverable by AI agents. This means creating content and structuring offers in a way that is easy for AI to parse and understand.
- Security and Trust: As AI agents handle transactions, RMNs must have robust security measures in place.25 This includes secure payment infrastructure and protocols that ensure transactions are safe and traceable, even when a human is not directly involved.
In essence, RMNs will need to evolve from being a “digital billboard” to becoming a “machine-first marketplace.”27 The winning strategy will be to elevate the human shopping experience while simultaneously optimizing for a new class of consumer: the AI agent.