As A.I. Agents Begin Shopping, Brands Are Changing Their Sales Pitch

When an A.I. agent goes shopping, how does it decide what to buy?

That’s the big question on every marketing executive’s mind as customers increasingly turn to chatbots for recommendations and as new A.I. agents from Meta and OpenAI offer to help anyone send a bot shopping on their behalf.

A new category of start-up is vying to help brands figure it out. Straddling the line between tech and marketing, its strategies depart sharply from traditional advertising.

“When you advertise to humans, you target eyeballs, emotions and dopamine, but when you advertise to agents, you advertise to logic, a very mathematical logic,” said Aviv Shamny, the co-founder and chief executive of Limy, an “AI search platform” backed by the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz.

Not long ago, most websites blocked bots. Some stores, like Amazon, are also blocking some A.I. agent shoppers. But many retailers and brands want to cater to A.I. Traffic to American retail sites from A.I. sources increased 393 percent in 2026, according to a report from Adobe. Experts envision a more agent-centric future. By 2030, “agent-influenced spend” might constitute up to 20 percent of total U.S. e-commerce, or $385 billion, according to Morgan Stanley research.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/10/03/business/dealbook/ai-agent-marketing.html