For years, businesses have focused on protecting their sites from malicious bots. This same architecture now blocks beneficial AI agents acting on behalf of consumers. Companies must rethink their technical infrastructure to differentiate and welcome these new 'good bots' for agentic commerce.
Previously, building sophisticated digital experiences required large, expensive development teams. AI and agentic tools level the playing field, allowing smaller businesses to compete on capabilities that were once out of reach. This creates a new 'guy in the garage' threat for established players.
A key fear of machine-to-machine commerce is that it will optimize solely for the lowest price. However, the 'human in the loop' model ensures the agent acts as a curator, presenting options for a final human decision. This preserves the importance of brand, aesthetics, and subjective value beyond pure cost.
Instead of viewing AI agents as a fundamentally new customer, brands should integrate them as a new channel within their existing omnichannel strategy, much like how e-commerce was added to physical retail. This reframes the challenge from total reinvention to strategic expansion.
History shows marketers often ruin new channels (email, SMS) by overwhelming them with low-quality 'spam.' The immediate push to monetize the agent channel could create a similar 'arms race' of spam-bots and anti-spam agents, eroding consumer trust and killing the channel's potential.
In an agent-driven world, marketing success depends less on visual persuasion and more on providing structured, machine-readable information. The marketer's job becomes curating the business's value proposition as high-quality training data that an AI agent can easily parse and act upon.