Agentic commerce: brands now need two experiences

Agentic commerce means AI agents research, compare and buy on people's behalf. More and more often, a brand's first contact isn't a human scrolling but an agent filtering. Brands therefore need two experiences: one an agent can read, and one a person can feel.

When competitors agree

One of my favorite details of the year: Google, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, Salesforce and Stripe rarely agree on much. But apparently they agree on how software goes shopping for us. Since April 2026, they've sat together on the council that steers the Universal Commerce Protocol, an open standard for how AI agents interact with merchants, from product search to checkout. Google's Universal Cart builds on it, rolling out in summer 2026 and letting an agent research, compare and assemble purchases.

I've learned to pay attention when competitors agree on a standard. That's usually the moment a development stops being a demo and becomes infrastructure. It's the same pattern that made me take Gaussian Splatting seriously.

The agent filters first

There's a design question hiding in this that many brands haven't spotted yet. For a growing share of purchases, the first one to see an offer isn't a person but an agent doing the pre-selection. That splits the brief in two.

The first part: the offer has to become machine-readable, meaning structured, comparable and accessible to agents. If it isn't, it simply doesn't make the shortlist. That sounds like IT, but it's a brand decision. What an agent learns about a product decides whether a person ever gets to see it.

The human side gains value

The second part is easy to miss: the human-facing side doesn't shrink, it concentrates. When agents handle the researching, comparing and reordering, the few moments where a person actually meets a brand become the places where preference is formed: at a trade fair, in a store, with the product in their hands.

Experiences then stop being one marketing channel among many. They become where the relationship happens. An interactive product experience like our 3D Product Explorer at a trade fair or in a showroom is exactly that kind of moment: a person makes a decision no agent can make for them.

Early and still open

Much of this is early. The first offerings are launching in the US, and how willingly people will actually hand over purchase decisions is still unproven. There will be categories where agents take over almost everything, and others where they barely play a role.

Still, it's worth preparing now. Brands that only make their offer machine-readable once agents are already shopping will find themselves at the back of the shortlist.

Two experiences

Going forward, brands need two experiences: one an AI can parse, and one a person can feel. And the second one just became more valuable, not less.

See how we design digital product experiences and commerce solutions for both sides in Digital Commerce.