As consumers delegate purchasing to personal AI agents, marketing's emotional appeals will fail. Brands must prepare for a "Business-to-Machine" (B2M) world where algorithms evaluate products on function and data, rendering decades of psychological tactics obsolete.

As users delegate purchasing and research to AI agents, brands will lose control over the buyer's journey. Websites must be optimized for agent-to-agent communication, not just human interaction, as AI assistants will find, compare, and even purchase products autonomously.

Agentic commerce isn't just a substitute for existing online shopping. It can unlock new spending from high-income individuals whose primary barrier to consumption is time, not money. By automating purchasing, agents reduce this "time cost of consumption," potentially adding new, incremental dollars to the economy.

The next frontier in e-commerce is inter-company AI collaboration. A brand's AI will detect an opportunity, like a needed digital shelf update, and generate a recommendation. After human approval, the request is sent directly to the retailer's AI agent for automatic execution.

Beyond booking meetings for high-value deals, AI agents can be empowered to handle the full sales cycle for lower-priced products. They can answer questions, provide discount codes, and conduct follow-up, creating a significant, automated revenue stream with no human sales involvement.

As AI agents automate day-to-day e-commerce optimization, the primary role for humans evolves. Core competencies will shift from data analysis and execution to high-level decision-making and managing the complex, collaborative joint business planning process with retail partners.

Amazon has attached a specific, massive financial value to its AI assistant, Rufus. It's projected to generate over $10 billion in new sales annually by increasing conversion rates by 60%, proving the immediate and substantial ROI of embedding AI into the e-commerce customer journey.

Amazon is suing Perplexity because its AI agent can autonomously log into user accounts and make purchases. This isn't just a legal spat over terms of service; it's the first major corporate conflict over AI agent-driven commerce, foreshadowing a future where brands must contend with non-human customers.

The rise of AI agents means website traffic will increasingly be non-human. B2B marketers must rethink their playbooks to optimize for how AI models interpret and surface their content, a practice emerging as "AI Engine Optimization" (AEO), as agents become the primary researchers.