For years, marketers optimised funnels built around clicks, sessions, and conversion rates. But that funnel is quietly being reshaped. We’re entering an agentic commerce era, where AI doesn’t just assist shoppers but acts for them.
In this new model, AI agents research products, compare options, surface the best value, answer questions, and even complete purchases. The implication for brands is massive: visibility, persuasion, and conversion are happening inside AI-driven environments, not traditional web pages.
Five new agentic commerce tools and technologies signal how this shift is becoming real, and how marketers can adapt to stay competitive.
1. Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP)
At the center of agentic commerce is a simple problem: fragmentation. Different agents, platforms, payment systems, and retailers don’t speak the same language.
What UCP Changes
The Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) introduces an open, shared standard that allows AI agents, retailers, and payment providers to interact across the full shopping journey:
- Product discovery
- Consideration and comparison
- Checkout and payment
- Post-purchase support
Instead of brands building one-off integrations for every AI surface, UCP creates a single connective layer.
Why Marketers Should Care
For marketers, UCP is less about infrastructure and more about reach and resilience:
- Your products can be discovered and purchased across multiple AI agents without rebuilding integrations.
- Reduced technical friction means faster go-to-market for new commerce experiences.
- It future-proofs your commerce stack as agentic shopping expands across channels and devices.
In short, UCP helps ensure your brand doesn’t disappear when shopping moves from browsers to agents.
2. Conversational Checkout
One of the biggest leaks in digital commerce has always been checkout friction. The longer the path from interest to purchase, the higher the abandonment.
What’s New
Eligible product listings can now support direct checkout within AI-powered environments, allowing users to complete purchases while they’re still researching, without jumping across tabs or sites.
This enables:
- Checkout inside conversational or AI-led discovery flows
- Stored payment and shipping details for faster conversion
- Retailers remaining the seller of record
The Marketing Impact
This changes the conversion strategy:
- Intent is captured instantly, not hours or days later.
- The traditional landing-page-first model becomes less dominant.
- Product data, trust signals, and pricing accuracy become more important than page design.
Marketers should think less about “driving traffic” and more about being transaction-ready wherever intent appears.
3. Business Agents
Shoppers ask questions before they buy and now those questions are answered inside AI interfaces rather than on product pages.
What Business Agents Do
A Business Agent or an always-on AI sales associate functions like a branded virtual sales associate that:
- Answers product questions in your brand’s voice
- Appears within search and conversational environments
- Helps shoppers evaluate fit, features, and value
Over time, these agents can be trained on brand-specific data and customer insights.
Why This Matters for Brands
This is a new form of conversational merchandising:
- Your brand voice shows up at high-intent decision moments.
- FAQs, product education, and objections are handled instantly.
- The experience scales without adding headcount.
For marketers, Business Agents blur the line between content, support, and sales, turning product knowledge into a real-time conversion lever.
4. Direct Offers
Discounts have always influenced purchase behaviour, but timing has been everything.
How Direct Offers Work
Direct Offers introduce AI-driven promotional placements that surface only when a shopper is ready to buy. Instead of broadcasting deals, offers appear inside AI-led discovery flows.
Examples include:
- Targeted discounts
- Limited-time incentives
- Future support for bundles and free shipping
The Strategic Advantage
For marketers, this unlocks a new efficiency layer:
- Promotions are triggered by readiness, not just interest.
- Reduced margin waste from over-discounting early.
- Higher likelihood of closing the sale when the price is the final barrier.
It’s less about shouting louder and more about intervening at exactly the right moment.
5. Conversational Attributes
Traditional product feeds were built around keywords and specs. AI-driven shopping requires something deeper: contextual understanding.
What’s Changing
New conversational attributes in Merchant Center allow brands to surface richer product information, such as:
- Answers to common customer questions
- Use-case recommendations
- Compatibility, alternatives, and accessories
These attributes help AI systems understand why and when a product is relevant.
Why This Is a Big Deal for Discovery
This is essentially SEO for conversational commerce:
- Products are matched to intent, not just queries.
- Brands that provide richer data gain visibility in AI responses.
- Merchandising becomes semantic, not just searchable.
Marketers who invest early in these attributes will be easier to discover as shopping moves away from keyword-based search.
What This Means for Marketers Moving Forward
Agentic commerce isn’t just a new set of tools. It’s a mindset shift.
Key Takeaways
- Funnels are collapsing: Discovery, consideration, and checkout now happen in one flow.
- Data quality beats page optimisation: AI agents rely on structured, accurate product information.
- Brand voice matters inside AI: Business Agents become a new brand touchpoint.
- Timing beats targeting: Direct Offers reward readiness, not reach. This is a huge benefit for marketers.
- Openness wins: Standards like UCP reduce dependency on single platforms.
A World Where AI Shops for People
In an agentic shopping era, consumers don’t always browse, they delegate.
That delegation changes how influence, trust, and conversion work.
- The brands that win won’t just ask, “How do we drive traffic?”
- They’ll ask, “How do we help AI choose us?”
That’s the real opportunity agentic commerce unlocks, and the challenge marketers must now rise to meet.
Need a fresh perspective? Let’s talk.
At 360 OM, we specialise in helping businesses take their marketing efforts to the next level. Our team stays on top of industry trends, uses data-informed decisions to maximise your ROI, and provides full transparency through comprehensive reports.
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