AI agents are becoming the new shoppers, and this is the biggest change in marketing this week. When you think about shopping in the future, imagine this: instead of you searching for a product yourself, you tell an AI agent what you want, and the agent finds the best option for you. Major retailers like Amazon and Walmart are already testing this with chat-based shopping assistants. These AI helpers look at prices, quality, shipping, and returns to pick products that match what customers need. This is agentic commerce—using AI agents to do the shopping.

What makes this different from today is that AI agents don't care about brand names the way humans do. When a person shops, they might pick their favorite brand. But when an AI agent shops, it picks based on facts: Is it the cheapest? Does it ship fast? Is it good quality? This means brands can't just rely on being famous anymore. Marketers need to make sure all their product facts are clear, correct, and in a format that AI can read.

Another huge change is that ads are moving inside conversations. OpenAI started putting ads inside ChatGPT for people in the United States. Instead of seeing ads on a web page, people see them right at the bottom of their ChatGPT answers when they're relevant. A US senator even asked questions about how safe these ads are, because this is such a new idea. For marketers, this means they need to think about how to reach people through answer-native ads—ads that fit naturally into AI answers.

Marketing teams are also getting AI coworkers. These aren't just tools that marketers use—they're AI agents that can make decisions and take actions on their own. The AI agent can look at a campaign and say, "This isn't working, let me try something different," and then make the change automatically. Companies like HubSpot and Salesforce have built AI agents that can manage whole campaigns, find people who might buy something, and spot customers who might leave. Already, 95% of marketing teams use at least some kind of AI help with their work.

To succeed in this new world, brands need to learn a new skill called GEO, which stands for Generative Engine Optimization. This is different from the old SEO (Search Engine Optimization) because it's about making content that AI agents can understand and use. When you write a product description, you need to include details like size, color, price, and shipping time in a way that AI can read. If you just write "This is a really cool shirt" without details, an AI agent won't know what to recommend it for. But if you write "Blue cotton t-shirt, size medium, $25, ships in 2 days," then AI agents can recommend it easily.

Companies are also working together on big AI partnerships. OpenAI and ServiceNow announced they're working together to bring powerful AI to businesses everywhere. This matters because it means AI agents will be built right into the software that companies use every day. Instead of needing a separate AI tool, marketers will have AI helping them inside the systems they already use.

The message for marketers this week is simple: the future isn't about having the most AI content—it's about having the cleanest data that AI can trust. Brands that win will have correct product information, honest descriptions, and clear facts that AI agents can read and believe. This is the beginning of marketing to machines, not just people.