Content for online shops needs to change because its audience is changing: Your next “customer” might not be a human but an AI. You think this seems far-fetched? It’s not. It is a shift happening right now. The way people discover, compare, and buy products is being changed by AI assistants like ChatGPT, AI search engines like Perplexity, and others.
And this is just the beginning.
Soon, “autonomous agents” could take this another step further. They won’t just recommend products. They will be able to make purchases on a user’s behalf.
This evolution changes the effectiveness of traditional SEO and advertising. This article provides you with a guide to this transformation. We’ll explore what’s happening today, what’s coming next, and learn about the new tools and skills you need.
1. Your new customer: not a human
Often, we buy what we already know or we decide on a whim. But sometimes, we do research before a purchase: we type a query into a search bar, scroll through a list of links, browse various e-commerce sites, and look at reviews in blogs and elsewhere. But this familiar journey is changing. Today, a user might ask Perplexity to “summarize the top five reviews for this laptop” or see a Google “AI Overview” that directly compares three competing products, complete with pros and cons.
This is the first phase of the “agentic shift” in ecommerce: the AI Copilot. Tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google’s AI Overviews are in wide use today. They can work like conversational search engines that assist users by summarizing, comparing, and recommending. Their impact is immediate: they are “collapsing” the sales funnel by providing direct answers, often bypassing the traditional search results page and your website entirely.
This isn’t just theoretical. In 2025, these platforms moved from simple recommendations to active commerce. OpenAI, for instance, announced “Instant Checkout,” a feature allowing users to purchase products from merchants like Etsy and Shopify directly within the ChatGPT interface, powered by its “Agentic Commerce Protocol.” Similarly, Perplexity has partnered with PayPal to enable direct, in-chat purchases for products and travel.
The next logical step, and one in active development, is the Autonomous Agent. It is supposed to go beyond assistance. It works towards goals on a user’s behalf. The prompt of the future isn’t “what are the best boots?” It’s “Find and order the best, most durable waterproof boots for a construction worker that offer all-day comfort, are available in size 11, and cost under $150.”
E-commerce giant Amazon has confirmed this as a core part of its roadmap. Their vision also has two phases: the first, already in progress with its chatbot Rufus and AI-generated shopping guides, involves proactive recommendations. The second, more autonomous phase being prototyped, could see an agent not just suggest a product but add it to your cart or even complete the purchase for you.
These developments present a clear problem for marketers and content creators. Our traditional playbook including SEO, social media advertising, and landing page design is built to capture human attention. But these new AI gatekeepers don’t see ads. They don’t browse websites. They read structured data, parse expert content, and analyze product feeds.
To reiterate: Autonomous Agents are still in their infancy. AI Copilots are not. This shift is happening today. It might look small right now. But it has the potential to grow quickly.
Let’s see next how you adjust your content strategy for this emerging AI world.
2. Your new tool: Generative Engine Optimization (GEO)
The current and upcoming changes demand additional skills and an adapted toolbox. Important example: One of your main tools, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), is about optimizing for keywords to rank on a results page for a human to click. Your new additional tool must be Generative Engine Optimization (GEO). This is the practice of optimizing for intent and structured data to be the definitive answer an AI co-pilot or agent selects.
Let’s use our boot example to see the difference:
- SEO Target: Your goal is to rank for the keyword “best steel toe boots.”
- GEO Target: Your goal is to be the chosen answer for the prompt, “What are the most durable, waterproof boots for a construction worker that offer all-day comfort and have a non-slip sole?”
An AI cannot easily fulfill this complex user query by just looking for a keyword. It needs to find rich, detailed, and, above all, machine-readable data that proves your product meets every single one of those criteria. The brand that provides this data most clearly and authoritatively will win the AI’s recommendation and, ultimately, the sale.
This is where technical elements like structured data (Schema) become critical. The AI also neeeds to verify your claims, so it will look for signals of trust and authority (like E-E-A-T) both on your page and across the web. This diverse approach, which includes on-page, off-page, and technical optimization, is what makes GEO a complex and essential new skill.
For more about GEO, read my in-depth explainer here: GEO explained: The content marketer’s guide to Generative Engine Optimization
But for now, let’s focus on the core playbook.
3. Your new playbook: Ready for the agentic shift
This new reality doesn’t require throwing out your old playbook, but it does require adding new pages and chapters. Here is an actionable plan for marketers that addresses both the “copilot” phase today and the “autonomous agent” phase of tomorrow.
Addition 1: Data is the new creative
In an AI-driven world, your most effective “creative” won’t necessarily be a flashy banner ad. Instead, it might be a perfectly structured, real-time product feed.
Action (Today): Your immediate priority is to feed the AI copilots. Implement comprehensive Schema.org markup across your site. This structured data is the technical language that explicitly tells Google AI Overviews, Perplexity, and others what your product is, what its features are, how much it costs, and whether it’s in stock. This sounds like a technical task, but it is now also a marketing one. A clean feed is how you ensure the AI pulls the correct price, availability, and features.
Action (Tomorrow): This same structured data becomes the essential source of information that autonomous agents will use to make purchasing decisions. Keep in mind: An agent’s job is to execute a task based on hard constraints (e.g. price, size, features). It won’t “browse” your beautifully designed landing page. You can’t upsell to it. It doesn’t care about your newsletter. Instead, you need to provide all the facts and figures. In a nutshell: The work you do today to get your data in order is a direct investment in being legible to the agents of tomorrow.
Addition 2: Your content must answer, not just attract
If structured data is the “what” for an AI, your content is the “why.” This is where you provide the context, benefits, and answers that convince a copilot your product is the right choice.
Action (Today): Rewrite your product descriptions to be conversational and benefit-driven. Think about the questions your customers actually ask and answer them directly. Building a comprehensive, clearly-structured FAQ section on your product pages is almost a “cheat code” for GEO. It provides a pre-packaged, easy-to-digest block of text that directly feeds a copilot the answers to likely questions.
Action (Tomorrow): Autonomous agents will also rely on this deep, qualitative content to make their final decision. A prompt like “…that offer all-day comfort” cannot be verified by a spec sheet. An agent will need to parse your content (and reviews) for descriptions, materials, and user testimonials that substantiate the “comfort” claim. This kind of content can move your product from being a simple commodity to a verified solution.
Addition 3: Win with “niche trust,” not price (your moat for tomorrow)
One more thing to keep in mind: if your product can be easily commoditized, the autonomous agent is a direct threat. An agent’s core function will be to execute a user’s request, and for many products, “find the lowest price” will be an implicit instruction. An AI can compare thousands of vendors in a microsecond. Competing on price alone becomes an unwinnable race to the bottom.
But what about our boot example? The prompt wasn’t “find the cheapest boot.” It was “find the best boot… with all-day comfort.” This is where you build your new competitive moat. The new currency of e-commerce will very likely be “niche trust.”
Niche trust is the verifiable authority you build around your specific category. It’s the collection of signals that proves to an AI that your product is the superior solution, not just the cheapest option. This is precisely where content marketers become a valuable asset for a brand. An AI can’t find a ‘lowest price’ for ‘all-day comfort,’ but it can find and parse your in-depth guide to boot materials, your comparison of sole technologies, and your 50 five-star reviews that all use the word ‘comfortable.’ This is your defense and your greatest opportunity.
4. Final word
Hopefully, I was able to make clear: The shift towards AI ecommerce has already begun and it has the potential to be a major distruptor. As marketers, our job is evolving with it. Today, we are helping the first AI copilots by providing the best, clearest answers. Tomorrow, this same skill set will make us the trusted helpers for the autonomous agents that drive revenue.
If you wonder why this transformation is happening so quickly, the answer is simple: the financial stakes are enormous. E-commerce is a multi-trillion-dollar market. OpenAI, which spends breathtaking sums on its platform, needs actual and potential revenue growth to keep its investors happy. Established giants like Amazon must adopt to this technology to defend their dominance. Meanwhile, other players like Google could see a historic opportunity to finally gain a foothold in direct commerce.
This is a new playing field, and some of the largest companies as well as some of the hottest startups in the world are competing to win.
This corporate push is met by a strong user pull. The advantages for the consumer are self-evident. It is simply easier to ask an AI to find the best product than to spend an hour sifting through ten browser tabs. Sure: Sometimes this can be part of the fun. But for many product categories and for many people, delegation will become the new normal. It’s convenient.
This is why the time to adapt is now. The businesses that treat their content as a structured asset today, build niche trust, and feed the AIs with clear data will be the ones discoverable and dominant in this new, agent-driven world.
