Inside the Race to Win Shoppers in AI-Enabled Marketplace
As agentic commerce reshapes discovery and conversion, platforms are racing to help brands reach shoppers, yet building cohesive, accountable operating models remains a steep challenge.
To be sure, one of the current biggest challenges across the board is determining how to engage with consumers in a post-click world that's fueled by artificial intelligence, Paulita David, senior managing director, head of U.S. at Reddit, shared with P2PI at CES last month. "If you are a marketer in the world right now, it is incredibly difficult to break through the noise."
The company is doubling down on helping brands have authentic, human conversations to help shoppers learn about their products and brands. Reddit threads are becoming an important source of training and reference material for large language models, she noted, reflecting the platform’s growing influence on AI-driven discovery.
While it can be challenging to plot next steps in an AI landscape morphing by the week, brands are wise to think about where they can engage at this very moment to grow discoverability, she advised.
Brands in need of baby steps can keep an eye toward helpfulness.
"Humanity is never going to leave commerce. We are human, we are shopping,” David reminded. “What emotions get you to buy something? Or what needs or what information gets you to buy something? That's not going away. So where can you have those human conversations?"
If Reddit sees its competitive advantage through the power of human conversation, Pinterest is leaping to the next stage with intent made visible. With algorithms driving discovery, platforms that can surface durable, actionable signals have an advantage.
Pinterest counts more than 600 million monthly active users, and over half of them say they're there to shop, said Julie Towns, VP of product marketing and product operations.
Pinterest argues that, unlike social feeds built around speedy scrolling, it can capture clearer intent signals because users save ideas, build boards and return to them over time.
This behavior effectively turns Pinterest into a visual search engine, especially for Gen Z. Nearly 40% of Gen Z users who use both Pinterest and Google start their searches on Pinterest, according to Towns.
The company is also looking to tie digital discovery more directly to in-store outcomes, as brands push for clearer visibility into translating digital discoverability into physical purchases.
"While a lot of the research is still happening online, many journeys are omnichannel, [and] more than 80% of users are checking out physically in stores," she noted.
For CPG brands, the challenge is compounded by the fact that most transactions ultimately occur on retailer-owned platforms, limiting visibility into conversions. Pinterest launched linking and retail media network integrations, including with Albertsons and Instacart, to help brands maintain greater control over where shoppers land and how their purchases are measured, said Towns.
Moving Into Action
With AI embedding more deeply into commerce workflows, conversations have shifted from speculation to execution; however, integration challenges remain a very real hurdle.
Most organizations are still deploying AI in isolated ways, said Drew Cashmore, chief strategy officer at Vantage, with different teams using separate tools to address narrow problems rather than building connected operating models.
“We’re solving micro problems vs. the big picture problems," Cashmore said.
That fragmentation, Cashmore warned, risks weakening differentiation across retail media and commerce platforms, particularly as data and buying tools become more standardized.
“When everybody has everybody’s data,” he said, “what becomes the differentiator?”
Indeed, even with better discovery and activation tools, many brands still say the hardest part now is coordinating all of it, said Beth Gross, head of commerce media at Yahoo. Siloed budgets and conversations remain the most difficult challenge, and it can ultimately hinder repeat investments.
"Operating in these vacuums is not sustainable, and it's not going to create the best outcomes," she stressed.
She pointed to inconsistent performance data across platforms as one of the biggest barriers to alignment, particularly as brands try to evaluate results across multiple retail partners and media environments. Without shared benchmarks, teams are often left making budget and optimization decisions based on incomplete or incompatible metrics, which complicates efforts to scale what works and cut what doesn't.
Teams need to be clear on defining and aligning on what success looks like, said Gross, "because if everybody walks away with a different KPI, then how are you ever going to get repeat investment?"
