OpenAI's checkout function is next-level for marketers
The one thing you need to know in AI today | AI Ready CMO
Two announcements yesterday, both about OpenAI’s Instant Checkout: Walmart’s in, and so is Salesforce.
The press coverage framed it as expansion, which technically it is. But the more interesting question is what happens when the world’s largest retailer and a major enterprise commerce platform both claim real estate in a system with fundamentally limited space.
ChatGPT’s interface isn’t a search results page with 10 blue links. When someone asks for “the best air fryer,” the model recommends maybe three options. Walmart now owns one of those slots. Salesforce, with its thousands of enterprise merchants, owns another. Shopify, the launch partner of OpenAI, might own the last one. The game isn’t about being in the system—it’s about being chosen by the system, and the players with direct integration deals just stacked the deck.
The rhetoric around ACP—the Agentic Commerce Protocol—talks about openness. “Any merchant can eventually plug in,” they say. True. But “can plug in” and “will be surfaced to customers” are completely different problems.
And therein lies the opportunity: this shift makes specificity more valuable than ever.
Walmart can’t be everything to everyone in a three-recommendation limit. If you’re selling a $47 online course about marathon training for people with knee problems, you’re not competing with Walmart—you’re too specific for them to bother with. The challenge is making sure the AI knows you exist and understands exactly what makes you different.
That means rich semantic data, clear positioning, and content that teaches these models why you’re the answer to a very particular question.
The marketers who win in this environment won’t be the ones optimizing for LLM prompts like they optimized for Google. They’ll be the ones who build such clear, distinctive positioning that when someone asks for exactly what they do, there’s no other logical recommendation.
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