How Do You Market to an AI Customer?

2026-06-11 · Source: Feeds - HBR.org · Field: Business & Management — Marketing, Branding & Advertising, E-commerce & Digital Commerce, Corporate Strategy & Leadership · Depth: Intermediate, medium

Summary

The article "How Do You Market to an AI Customer?" by Kartik Hosanagar, published June 11, 2026, explores the emergence of AI agents as a new customer type in commerce, fundamentally altering traditional marketing approaches. It highlights Walmart's proactive strategy, including partnerships with OpenAI for "Agentic Commerce Protocol" (ACP) and Google for "Universal Commerce Protocol" (UCP), enabling AI agents to query and transact. This contrasts with Amazon's focus on its proprietary agent, Rufus. The author identifies three key misconceptions among marketers: the belief that a human will always be involved, that AI crawlers suffice for visibility, and that AI is merely another sales channel. The piece notes OpenAI's "Instant Checkout", launched in September 2025, was discontinued five months later in March 2026 due to low conversion, indicating complexities in fully autonomous transactions. Walmart's subsequent move to route checkout back to its own site, even when discovery happens on ChatGPT, underscores the evolving balance of power.

Key takeaway

For marketing professionals navigating the shift to agentic commerce, you must recognize AI agents as a new customer species, not just another channel. Your traditional human-centric persuasion tactics will not apply. Begin by auditing your product data for machine readability and strategically integrating with AI ecosystems like ChatGPT or Gemini. Focus on understanding what AI agents reward, ignore, and trust to maintain brand preference and customer relationships as commerce evolves.

Key insights

AI agents are a distinct customer type requiring a new marketing science beyond human persuasion.

Principles

• AI agents make decisions, not just filter information.
• Human persuasion science does not transfer to AI agents.
• Owning the customer relationship is critical in agentic commerce.

In practice

• Structure product data for machine readability.
• Integrate with key AI ecosystems like ChatGPT or Gemini.
• Re-evaluate success metrics beyond web analytics.

Topics

• Agentic Commerce
• AI Agents
• Marketing Strategy
• Customer Experience
• Digital Commerce
• Brand Management

Best for: Executive, AI Product Manager, Product Manager, Marketing Professional, Director of AI/ML, Consultant

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Editorial summary, takeaway, and curation by AIssential. Original article published by Feeds - HBR.org.