This article was based on the interview with Robin Ross, Digital, Analytics and Loyalty Executive at Activate Insight by Greg Kihlström, AI and MarTech keynote speaker for The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlström podcast. Listen to the original episode here:
As marketing leaders, we are no strangers to disruption. We’ve navigated the shift from print to digital, the rise of social media, the dominance of mobile, and the complexities of a data-driven world. Each evolution required new strategies, new technologies, and a new understanding of the customer journey. Yet, the next wave of change promises to be fundamentally different. We are on the cusp of an era where our carefully crafted brand messages, sophisticated user experiences, and multi-million dollar campaigns may be interpreted not by a person, but by a machine. This is the world of agentic commerce, where consumers deploy their own AI agents to research, negotiate, and purchase on their behalf.
This isn’t a far-flung, science-fiction scenario; it’s the next logical step in the consumer’s quest for efficiency and personalization. While brands are already leveraging internal AI agents to optimize their own operations, the truly transformative shift will come from the outside in. To explore this new frontier, we turn to the insights of Robin Ross, a veteran executive in digital analytics and loyalty. With a career spent understanding customer behavior and building lasting relationships, Robin brings a pragmatic and forward-thinking perspective to what he calls “a new puzzle to solve.” The question is no longer if we will need to market to machines, but how we will build the strategic and technical flexibility to engage with them as a new, powerful extension of our human customers.
The New Player in an Omnichannel World
The first challenge for any leadership team is classification. When a consumer’s AI agent arrives at your digital doorstep, what is it? Is it a new customer segment? A sophisticated bot? Or simply a new channel, another touchpoint in an increasingly complex ecosystem? The answer is likely a combination of all three, but framing it correctly is key to developing a coherent strategy. For those of us who have spent decades adding and integrating channels—from direct mail to e-commerce to social—this may feel like familiar territory, but with a critical twist. This channel has its own intelligence.
Robin Ross suggests we view this not as a replacement for existing models, but as a powerful new layer. He draws a parallel to the advent of e-commerce, which many predicted would be the death of brick-and-mortar retail. Instead, it became a vital component of a new omnichannel reality. The same logic applies here. The agent is not the endpoint, but a conduit that redefines the journey.
“I think really omnichannel is just being redefined. And now Agent is going to be a new place in this omnichannel that we need to be thinking about, right? And planning for, and I think it becomes an interesting business opportunity.”
This perspective is crucial for marketing leaders. It’s not about abandoning the principles of human-centric marketing, but about adapting them for a new intermediary. The agent becomes a channel that must be understood, optimized for, and integrated. This requires us to ask different questions: What kind of information does an agent prioritize? How does it evaluate options? What data formats are most easily digestible? It’s a new form of optimization, one that trades pixels and user flows for structured data and logical value propositions.
Beyond the Race to the Bottom: The Human in the Loop
A common fear among marketers when discussing agentic commerce is that it will inevitably lead to a commoditized, race-to-the-bottom marketplace. If machines are negotiating with machines, won’t they simply optimize for the lowest price and best delivery time, stripping away all the brand equity, emotional connection, and subjective value we’ve worked so hard to build? It’s a valid concern, but one that overlooks a critical component of the equation: the human behind the agent.
An AI agent is a proxy, programmed to achieve an outcome defined by its user. While price will always be a factor, it is rarely the only factor. A consumer might instruct their agent to find “the most sustainable option under $100,” “the highest-rated travel experience for a family with young children,” or “a gift that my spouse, who loves minimalist design, would appreciate.” The agent’s task is to filter the infinite noise of the internet and present curated options that align with these nuanced, human desires. This is where brand and experience re-enter the picture.
“And I think what it is is where can I add value as the human in the loop…that this could be curated for me, that it comes back into a place where then I can kind of decide that that kind of lights me up that that’s going to be a different experience for people where they’re going to enjoy it more.”
This “human in the loop” concept is the key. The agent does the heavy lifting—the research, the comparison, the initial vetting—but the final decision often rests with the person who feels the “light up” moment of finding the perfect choice. For marketers, this means our job isn’t to sell to the bot, but to equip the bot to sell for us. Our content, product descriptions, and brand values must be articulated so clearly and logically that an agent can easily recognize our offering as the superior solution for its user’s goal. The agent becomes a qualifier, and our brand story becomes the data it uses to make its recommendation.
Are You Agent-Ready? The New Technical Bar
For years, our technical posture has been defensive. We have built digital fortresses designed to protect our sites from bots, scrapers, and other forms of automated traffic. Our analytics are tuned to filter them out, and our security protocols are designed to block them entirely. Now, we must pivot to a new reality where we need to welcome “good bots”—the agents acting on behalf of paying customers. This requires more than a simple mindset shift; it demands a fundamental re-evaluation of our digital architecture.
Being “agent-ready” is the next technical imperative for the enterprise. It means creating pathways for agents to access information efficiently and accurately. This isn’t about impressing a machine with visuals or clever UX design; it’s about providing clean, structured, and comprehensive data that an agent can ingest to understand your value proposition. Are your product specifications, inventory levels, sustainability credentials, and user reviews accessible via an API? Is your content organized in a way that allows an agent to parse the signal from the noise?
“The thing I’ve been thinking about is people and businesses have been talking about agents for so long, and I’ve been playing with the idea, well, how many sites are even agent ready? Right? Like who, so we’ve worked for so long to protect our site from bots. And so bots are bad, but all of a sudden there’s this good bot.”
This is a conversation that marketing leaders must initiate with their counterparts in IT and technology, today. Robin’s observation highlights a significant blind spot in most organizations. While we measure human traffic with obsessive detail, few can even answer the question: “How much agent traffic are we getting right now?” The reality is that this traffic is already growing, invisibly, through new AI-powered search experiences and other tools. The first step is to achieve visibility. The next is to design a welcoming, efficient architecture for these new customers. Those who create a frictionless experience for agents will create a competitive advantage by making it easier for them to recommend and purchase their products.
Conclusion: The Enduring Fundamentals in a New Era
The rise of agentic commerce can feel daunting, another complex layer on an already challenging landscape. Yet, as with every technological shift, the core tenets of good business and marketing remain constant. Technology is an amplifier. It makes good businesses better and bad businesses worse, faster. The agent, for all its sophistication, is a tool in service of a human need. And at the heart of that need is a simple truth that should ground our strategies as we move forward: people enjoy buying, but they don’t enjoy being sold. Agents are, in essence, a consumer-built defense against being “sold to,” filtering out the spam and the irrelevant to focus on what truly adds value.
Our role as leaders is not to figure out how to trick these agents, but to build brands and create content so genuinely valuable that an impartial machine would have no choice but to recommend us. It requires a return to first principles: a clear value proposition, transparent information, authentic customer feedback, and a deep understanding of the outcomes our customers are trying to achieve. The brands that will thrive in this new era are the ones that have done the hard work of building a fundamentally sound business. The agent doesn’t change what matters; it just raises the stakes for proving it.
