AI has already drastically reshaped consumer journeys, and it’s only begun to scratch the surface of what we expect to be a complete overhaul. With OpenAI’s recent announcement to enable native purchases and checkouts in-app, the consumer journey takes its latest steps in its evolution — this is a major shift as consumers are able to complete the entire consumer journey without ever visiting a store in person or online. Instead of waiting for the market to settle, marketers need to lean into connecting and personalizing these reshaped customer journeys now. It’s critical to start testing, learning, and optimizing immediately to benefit from this transformative opportunity.
What marketers can do today
In my last blog post, I talked about why we’re in a critical period for AI winners to seize the reins. As with any sea change, you can start by reacting to the biggest waves.
Using AI agents as an example, the ecosystem is in the early stages of understanding how agents take over product discovery and purchases, and how this changes behavior on other steps. AI agents will reduce the amount of time consumers spend at every part of their journeys. Agents will take over steps like gathering and evaluating products, price comparison, and checkout. As such, marketers and CMNs need to start rethinking onsite retail media to anticipate more customer time shifting offsite.
When the adtech ecosystem started to highlight agentic AI, we knew it was a matter of time before customer journeys began shifting to agents. OpenAI’s Instant Checkout is a sign that this transition is hitting a new gear. While behaviors will start shifting with OpenAI’s user base, it’s only a matter of time before other platforms introduce their own agents and unlock these capabilities for their users — and LiveRamp is helping the ecosystem get ready for the rise of agents.
In the near term, consumers will spend less time on retailers’ owned and operated properties as more consumers explore agentic commerce, with ripple effects for product discovery, education, conversions, and purchases. Marketers can start by indexing more towards offsite retail media to continue connecting with customers during their buying journeys — and maintaining omnichannel connectivity for near-term results and long-term flexibility as we collectively learn how AI agents will influence them. CMNs should think both about how they leverage their data to rapidly scale offsite and what they can do to continue to drive consumers onsite in this changing world.
Key takeaways
Marketers should take two key things away from the recent news:
- Data and the ability to personalize the customer journey will always matter, but how that is done may change significantly. In order to flexibly adapt without stopping forward progress, marketers can safely rely on omnichannel connectivity to streamline activation into every destination — including AI — where their customers are spending time.
- Things may change slowly… then all at once. The rise of AI agents and chat interactions will at first be led by tech enthusiasts, but will eventually become as widespread and natural as ecommerce.
An omnichannel strategy will also help marketers understand consumers’ habits throughout all of these changes, all while maintaining connectivity to personalize every step of their journey.
The time is NOW
Our key takeaway for marketers hasn’t changed: don’t let uncertainty delay AI investment. Leading marketers must drive business results today while testing and learning the AI strategies that will propel their marketing forward. Every marketer’s AI use cases and results will look different, but they won’t be able to determine their optimal integrations without first testing and learning.
Finally, remember this: interoperability and omnichannel connectivity aren’t just buzzwords. They’re the bedrock of modern marketing — the surest way to drive outcomes, no matter how the future unfolds — and unlock the measurement to know which investments are delivering during critical times.