HOW DO YOU COMPETE IN AGENTIC COMMERCE?

Summary from the TLDR Marketing newsletter

Agentic commerce is reshaking e-commerce by turning organic search into a verification gate for AI-driven purchases rather than a traffic channel. AI agents powered about 20% of retail sales during the 2025 holiday season, and major platforms now support direct checkout through commerce protocols that bypass traditional websites. Autonomous buying mainly works in a narrow-middle since high-priced purchases resist delegation and low-priced goods already rely on subscriptions, so the real value comes from conversational commerce that compresses an average 14-click journey into 1 or 2 steps. The protocols force merchants to optimize structured product data and APIs instead of pages. As a result, SEO shifts from driving clicks to feeding trusted, granular data into AI systems, favoring incumbents for broad intent and specialists for specific intent.