AI Agents Are Buying Products For People Now

Your Weekly DTC Industry Roundup

Another week in ecommerce and the ground keeps shifting under everyone's feet.

OpenAI just made it possible to buy products without ever leaving a chat window, Meta's rolling out AI-powered ad personalization next month, and analysts are warning that "zero-click commerce" might tank website traffic across the board.

Meanwhile, virtual influencers are quietly taking over social commerce, and if you're heading into Black Friday without hourly revenue tracking, you're basically flying blind.

Here's what happened:

• OpenAI launches in-chat purchasing that bypasses Google and Amazon entirely
• Meta deploys AI personalization for content and ads starting December 2025
• Bernard Marr warns "zero-click commerce" could crater website traffic for retailers
• Virtual influencers scale up as 24/7 salespeople on TikTok and Instagram
• How to build a $30M-level growth forecast when you're doing $3M
• Hourly revenue tracking becomes critical for maximizing BFCM performance

Let's get into it.

Sponsor

Maximize every dollar during BFCM with FERMÀT’s Offer & Price Testing

FERMÀT is the leading AI funnel builder that helps ecommerce brands create high-converting landing pages without designers or developers.

Their features include: AI-powered landing pages and PDPs generated in minutes, A/B testing and experimentation tools, seamless integration with your ad platforms and Shopify checkout, customizable funnel templates, real-time performance optimization, and more!

We're partnering with FERMÀT to offer readers an exclusive 7-day trial. Click here to try FERMÀT today!

Try fermàt

AI Commerce

OpenAI and Stripe Just Built a Framework For AI to Buy Stuff For You

OpenAI and Stripe just announced the "Agentic Commerce Protocol."

It's a framework that lets AI agents browse, compare, and purchase products on your behalf. Instead of spending hours researching the best deal on groceries or flights, you just tell ChatGPT what you need and it handles the rest.

The protocol was built in partnership with Mastercard, American Express, and Coinbase. It establishes rules for how AI agents should behave when making purchases … verifying user intent, comparing options, ensuring secure payments, creating audit trails.

What this actually means: If AI agents start making buying decisions FOR consumers, your entire acquisition strategy gets flipped. You're not optimizing for human browsing behavior anymore. You're optimizing for algorithmic discovery.

Your product listings need to be structured so AI can easily parse and recommend them. Your pricing needs to be competitive in ways algorithms prioritize. Your brand differentiation needs to translate into data points that matter to machine learning models.

Nobody knows how fast adoption happens, but the infrastructure is live now. Worth paying attention.

See more details here

Platform Updates

Meta's AI Personalization Goes Live Next Month

Meta's deploying AI-powered content and ad personalization across Facebook and Instagram starting December 2025.

They also launched "Reels Trending Ads" out of beta, which lets brands buy ad slots immediately after top trending creator Reels. The AI curates trending inventory in real-time, identifies which Reels are becoming cultural moments, then surfaces that inventory to advertisers so you can place ads while the moment is still hot.

The catch: You're now competing for access to AI-curated viral content. The algorithm decides what's trending, when it's trending, and who gets access to ride that wave.

This changes the game from "create great ads" to "create great ads that can capitalize on trending moments your AI decides are relevant to your audience." If your creative team can't move fast enough, you'll miss the window. And if your targeting doesn't align with what Meta's AI thinks is relevant, you won't even get access to the inventory.

See full details

Market Performance

"Zero-Click Commerce" Could Tank Your Website Traffic

Bernard Marr just published a Forbes piece warning that "zero-click commerce" might eliminate website visits entirely for many purchases.

The concept: Consumers ask their AI agent to find the best deal on whatever they need. The AI handles research, comparison, and purchase. No clicks, no browsing, no landing on your product pages.

This isn't theoretical. The infrastructure exists now. OpenAI's commerce protocol, Google's payment partnerships, all the pieces are in place for consumers to shop without ever touching a brand's website.

What's unclear is adoption speed. Commodity products and replenishment purchases seem most vulnerable. High-consideration purchases might resist longer.

The strategic question: How do you optimize product data for algorithmic discovery instead of human browsing? How do you build brand preference when consumers never visit your site?

Nobody has definitive answers yet, but waiting until traffic tanks before figuring this out seems like a bad plan.

Track this trend

Social Commerce

Virtual Influencers Are Scaling Up as 24/7 Salespeople

AI-powered virtual influencers are becoming a legitimate channel for social commerce on TikTok and Instagram.

These aren't chatbots. They're fully rendered digital personalities that host livestreams, create content, engage with followers, and drive product sales. They work around the clock without pay, breaks, or ego management.

The technology has improved enough that some virtual influencers have built genuine followings. They're hosting shopping livestreams, collaborating with brands, and generating measurable sales.

For brands, the math is simple: A virtual influencer costs a one-time development fee plus minimal ongoing costs. A human influencer requires negotiation, contracts, scheduling, content approval, and relationship management. The virtual one never misses a deadline, never goes off-brand, and scales infinitely.

Initial data suggests some audiences don't care if the influencer is real as long as the content entertains and the product recommendations make sense.

If that holds true, human influencers might be competing with AI-generated personalities that cost a fraction as much and work 24/7.

See for yourself here

Strategic Insights

Black Friday Winners Know Their Numbers by 7am

Most brands don't know if they're winning on Black Friday until the day is already over.

Taylor Holiday from Common Thread Collective just released a breakdown on why hourly revenue tracking is critical for BFCM. The core insight: If you don't know what percentage of your budget should be spent by 7am PST on Black Friday, you're guessing.

Holiday's approach layers in forecasted goals broken down by hourly pacing from previous years. This lets you see in real-time whether you're ahead, behind, or on track relative to expectations. For every channel.

The advantage: You can adjust ad spend, shift budgets, or push promotions harder if you're underperforming. By noon. Not Monday morning when the weekend is over and you're analyzing what went wrong.

Common Thread is giving away free hourly trackers for the next 10 days to brands that reach out. Whether you use theirs or build your own, the principle holds: Real-time visibility lets you make adjustments while the day is still happening.

If you're trying to maximize revenue during the biggest shopping weekend of the year, flying blind until Monday seems like leaving money on the table.

Watch the breakdown

Podcast

How Do I Project Growth for My $3M Brand?

Your brand’s doing $3M in revenue. You’re growing fast. But how do you actually project that growth for 2026, without guessing?

In this episode of The DTC Hotline, we break down how to build a growth forecast like a $30M brand — using constraints, not wishful thinking.

You’ll learn:

How to forecast growth when you’re in the $3M–$10M stage

The Spend-to-aMER model (and why it beats ROAS)

How to set profitability constraints before chasing scale

The difference between a $3M and $30M planning mindset

What most founders get wrong about forecasting for 2026

Got a burning eComm question? Call or text 866-DTC-2263 to get it answered on the show.

Watch now

Final Thoughts

What This Means for Founders

The infrastructure for AI-driven commerce is live now, not coming someday. OpenAI's commerce protocol, Meta's AI personalization, virtual influencers hosting livestreams. These aren't beta tests anymore.

Whether these trends accelerate or stall depends on consumer adoption. But the smart play is building systems that work regardless of which way things go. Optimize product data for both human browsing and algorithmic discovery. Test AI-powered tools without betting the farm on any single platform.

The Black Friday tracking insight applies beyond BFCM. Real-time visibility into performance matters every week, not just during peak shopping periods. If you're waiting until Monday to analyze weekend performance, you've already missed the window to adjust.

Zero-click commerce might not kill website traffic entirely, but even a 20–30% decline would fundamentally change acquisition economics for most brands. Understanding how your customers discover and evaluate products right now gives you a baseline to measure against as behavior shifts.

Virtual influencers might seem gimmicky, but the operational advantages are real. Lower costs, zero scheduling conflicts, infinite scalability. If audiences don't care whether the personality is human as long as the content delivers value, that changes influencer economics pretty drastically.

The only certainty is that things keep changing faster than most brands can adapt. The question is whether you're building flexible systems that can handle whatever comes next, or optimizing for conditions that might not exist in 12 months.

Build accordingly.