What I’m hearing
Agentic Commerce is the buzzword of the moment. Between clients, colleagues and my very own Instagram algorithm, I can’t seem to escape it.
It doesn’t stop there. McKinsey puts global agentic commerce at $5 trillion by 2030 - a figure cited in the Australia Post 2026 eCommerce Report. Forbes recently ran the headline 'Sephora and Shopify Double Down On Agentic Commerce' off the back of integrations with ChatGPT.
I think everyone's jumping the gun. Let me explain.
What’s actually happening
It starts with two concepts.
#1 AI-influenced commerce - a person discovers a product through an LLM or AI overview, then visits your site to buy it.
Consumer-led
This is happening (36% of AI users discovered a new product via ChatGPT)
#2 Agentic Commerce - an AI agent autonomously researches, selects and completes a purchase on behalf of a person.
Industry-led
There are no autonomous end-to-end shopping solutions in the market
There are some early 'instant checkout' solutions in market - but they still require human sign-off at payment
It's clear to me that people in the industry are describing AI-influenced commerce and bucketing it under Agentic Commerce. McKinsey is forecasting $5 trillion by 2030 based on US Census Data and “adoption rates” for technology that isn't yet in market. Research report or pitch deck?
The direction is right. The urgency feels manufactured.
What I’m doing about it
I’m recommending Answer Engine Optimisation (AEO). Getting your brand discoverable in LLMs now, while laying the foundation for whatever agentic future eventually arrives.
So I went straight to the source. Who better to ask about showing up in LLMs than the LLMs themselves - here’s what my 3 amigos Gemini, Claude and ChatGPT had to say.
Prompt: What drives whether a brand or website is mentioned in LLM responses? Rank the top 3 factors by importance.
Gemini | Claude | ChatGPT |
|---|---|---|
#1 Brand Citations How often your brand is mentioned in trusted sources across the web. | #1 Brand Citations How often your brand is mentioned in trusted sources across the web. | #1 Brand Citations How often your brand is mentioned in trusted sources across the web. |
#2 Contextual Relevance How specifically your content maps to the user’s prompt. | #2 Backlinks How often your website is linked to by trusted domains across the web. | #2 Topical Authority Clear association between brand and category-related topics. |
#3 Data Readability Schema, clear structure (Q&A, comparison, guides, lists etc.). | #3 Data Readability Schema, clear structure (Q&A, comparison, guides, lists etc.). | #3 Data Readability Schema, clear structure (Q&A, comparison, guides, lists etc.). |
The consensus between them… ironically, consensus.
If multiple, authoritative online sources say you’re one of the best brands in your category, AI is likely to repeat that as fact.
Because of its heavy reliance on brand mentions, Digital PR is the "two birds, one stone" play - it boosts both your SEO and AEO performance at the same time.
You may want to tweak your site content to be more answer-driven and target key prompts, but don't go rewriting everything Q&A style. For AEO, what other people say about your brand matters more than what you say about yourself.
One thing worth noting: this is not the time to abandon SEO. Organic search still dominates as a traffic channel and the businesses hurting most are those who built their traffic on answering questions. Product-based searches on Google still prioritise paid and organic listings.
Tasks I’m ticking off next
✅ Making Digital PR a budget priority in FY26/27.
✅ Updating 5 key pages to contain more answer-driven content.
✅ Applying to share my product feed with ChatGPT.
✅ Auditing website schema.
Where I’m putting my money
In 2018, I attended a Google seminar where the keynote told us voice search would take over text-based search. We needed to be ready. It never happened.
In 2022, I sat in a Meta agency roundtable and was told that within six months we'd need to update our strategies to include the metaverse. That also never happened.
Every industry places bets on where things are going. Here's mine:
End-to-end Agentic Commerce is years away - and when it does arrive, it will start with low-risk, rule-based transactions, not the big stuff.
The brands working to show up in LLMs now are the ones I'd back.
So when someone sells you an agentic solution at your next retail conference - take the tote bag, nod politely, and go spend your 2026 budget where your customers are already searching. Agents will have their moment. Just not yet.
Disagree? I'll take the other side of that bet. Hit reply and tell me your odds.
Cheers,
Sarah Arvela Webb
Brought to you by many hours of research, conversation and actually reading the footnotes.