Every agentic commerce deck you have been sent this year implies the agent completes the purchase. The data says it mostly does not.
Research published on 17 August puts AI shopping agent usage at roughly 62% for product comparison, about 23% at checkout, and 19% for post-purchase activity.
Sit with that drop. Between comparing and buying, more than half the usage falls away. People are delegating the reading and keeping the deciding, which is what they already do with a good salesperson.
So your agent readiness work belongs in the consideration layer. Structured product data, clean comparison attributes, specifications a model can parse without guessing.
The checkout integrations will matter eventually. They do not matter this quarter, and the vendor pitching you one is selling ahead of the behaviour.
TALK ON THE MARKET
Le-Anne Engelbrecht of RCL Foods, on why her team keeps category specialists rather than generalists:
“There’s a real understanding and depth of knowledge that is required in certain categories.”
She was talking about pet food, which turned out far more complex than she expected. The same sentence explains why an agent comparing your product against a rival’s will embarrass you in exactly the categories you assumed were simple.
NUMBERS MATTER
Nearly 30%. That is the share of ad-eligible Google AI Mode queries already showing ads, per Similarweb, 17 August. The comparison stage that agents are busy dominating is also the stage filling with paid placement.
BEYOND MARKETING
Politicians are starting to ask a very old question: if the machines take our jobs, who owns the machines?
Check out Torsten’s last video about a direction in AI policy that has the unlikely support of Donald Trump, Sam Altman, and … Bernie Sanders. Quite a trio.
DAILY PROMPT
A simple but powerful AI Ideal Customer Profile Builder prompt from our AI-Ready CMO Hub:
Create a detailed Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) for my [PRODUCT/SERVICE]. I need you to develop a comprehensive profile that will guide my marketing and sales efforts.
Here’s what I know about my business:
**Business Context:**
- Product/Service: [DESCRIBE WHAT YOU SELL]
- Industry: [YOUR INDUSTRY]
- Current customers: [DESCRIBE YOUR BEST CUSTOMERS]
- Price point: [YOUR PRICING TIER]
- Geographic focus: [TARGET REGIONS/COUNTRIES]
**Business Goals:**
- Primary goal: [E.G., INCREASE MARKET SHARE, EXPAND INTO NEW SEGMENT]
- Secondary goals: [ANY ADDITIONAL OBJECTIVES]
Please create an ICP that includes:
1. **Demographics**: Job title, company size, industry, revenue, location
2. **Firmographics**: Company characteristics, growth stage, technology stack
3. **Psychographics**: Values, priorities, pain points, goals
4. **Behavioral Traits**: Buying process, decision-making style, budget authority
5. **Pain Points**: Specific challenges they face that your solution addresses
6. **Success Metrics**: How they measure success in their role
7. **Buying Triggers**: What events or situations prompt them to seek solutions
Format the profile as a clear, actionable document that my sales and marketing teams can use immediately. Include specific, realistic details rather than generic descriptions.
Use this when you need to describe your buyer precisely enough that a model comparing you to three competitors picks the right one to compare you against.
Generic tools create disconnected visuals. Riverflow generates consistent, campaign-ready creative built on your brand.
Riverflow learns your visual identity, tone, and rules so every asset it generates is unmistakably yours, not a generic result any other brand could use. Whether you need one asset or one hundred, it keeps every output aligned to your brand standards across Meta,TikTok, email, print, and beyond — no briefs, no shoots, no waiting.
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CMO CORNER
Your job is to create clarity and then disappear without chaos.
Agent readiness is a good test of whether you can. It is unglamorous work spread across product data, spec sheets and whoever owns the PIM, and none of it needs you in the room. What it needs is one decision, written down: we optimise for comparison, not checkout, until the data says otherwise. Make that call once and the next four months of small choices make themselves. Fail to make it and every one of them comes back to your calendar.
We provide CMOs with AI strategy consulting for marketing teams through our Teamless offering.
We run an interview series with marketing leaders about how AI actually changes their work. Real use cases, not predictions.
If you’re doing something worth talking about, the opportunity is free and available for anyone. Simply reply to this email with your pitch.
TOOL UPGRADE
If the agent does the comparing, the conversation layer is where you still get a say:
Manychat — best for conversation automation across Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger where the comparison actually happens. Try Manychat here →
Watermelon best for resolving the questions a comparison throws up before the buyer leaves to ask a model instead. Try Watermelon here →
Chatfuel best for teams whose customers already live in WhatsApp and Instagram and who need to be answerable there. Try Chatfuel here →
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LEARN THIS
If your team still writes prompts like search queries, Advanced Prompting for Marketers is worth the hour. It is aimed at marketers rather than engineers, and the section on structuring inputs is the one that moves output quality most. For the team that has the tools and is getting mediocre results from them.
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That’s it for today!
See you next time,
— Peter & Torsten
