For years, digital marketing has been built around a simple premise: a human scrolls through a feed or types a query into a search bar, and we, as marketers, interrupt that journey with a compelling ad.
But what happens when the shopper isn’t a human at all?
At Dogwood Media Solutions, we are closely watching a paradigm shift known as agentic commerce. This represents the move from AI as a search tool to AI as an active agent, a role where bots don’t just recommend products but actually make executive purchasing decisions on behalf of the consumer. As these AI agents become the primary interface for commerce, the traditional playbooks for Google and Facebook (Meta) Ads are being rewritten.
The Rise of the Proxy Shopper
According to recent industry insights from Investor’s Business Daily, giants like Amazon, Walmart, and eBay are already racing to integrate AI that moves beyond simple search. Amazon’s “Rufus” and Walmart’s generative AI search are precursors to a world where a user says, “Find me the best-rated ergonomic office chair under $200 and buy it.”
In this scenario, the buyer is an algorithm. It doesn’t get distracted by a pretty image on Instagram, and it doesn’t click on the first sponsored result on Google out of habit. It parses data, reviews, and technical specs in milliseconds.
The Disruption of the Google Search Model
Google’s Search Engine Marketing (SEM) has long relied on the “search-and-click” economy. However, as Google integrates Gemini and Search Generative Experience (SGE), the goal is to provide answers directly on the results page.
If an AI agent summarizes the best products for a user, the traditional “blue link” ad becomes less relevant. For marketers, the focus will shift from Keywords to Contextual Authority. To stay relevant in Google’s AI era, brands must ensure their product data is impeccably structured. If the AI agent cannot read your inventory or verify your shipping speeds through your Merchant Center, you won’t even make the AI’s shortlist.
The Disruption of the Meta Discovery Model
Meta’s advertising strength lies in discovery, which involves showing you something you didn’t know you wanted. Agentic commerce threatens this by replacing scrolling with delegating. If a user delegates their shopping to an AI assistant, they spend less time in the feed where ads live.
However, Meta is countering this by turning their own AI into a personal stylist or concierge. The future of Meta Ads is unlikely to be a static image; instead, it will be an invitation for a user’s AI agent to negotiate or interact with a brand’s AI. We are moving toward a Bot-to-Bot (B2B) marketing ecosystem where your ad spend is used to ensure your brand is the preferred recommendation within the Meta AI ecosystem.
How to Adapt Your Strategy to the AI Shopper Era
As we navigate this transition at Dogwood, we recommend three pivotal shifts for brands:
- Prioritize Machine-Readable Data: Your website’s Schema markup and product feeds are now more important than your catchy headlines. If an AI agent can’t scrape your data easily, you don’t exist.
- Optimize for Sentiment and Reviews: AI agents lean heavily on third-party validation. A 4.8-star rating with 1,000 reviews is a data point that an AI bot uses to de-risk a purchase. Reputation management is no longer just PR; it’s SEO for bots.
- Focus on “Zero-Click” Visibility: Invest in content that establishes your brand as an authority in your niche. If AI models are trained on your expert content, they’re more likely to recommend your products as the correct answer to a user’s prompt.
Strategy for Ads in the AI Shopper Era
The AI shopper era doesn’t mean the end of advertising; it means the end of interruption-based advertising. The brands that win in this new era will be those that provide the most frictionless, data-rich information to the agents that consumers trust.If you’re ready to future-proof your digital marketing strategy and stay ahead of the agentic commerce curve, reach out to us at dogwood.com today.
