OpenAI vs Google & Amazon: The Rise of Agentic Commerce

Buy it in ChatGPT: Instant Checkout and the Agentic Commerce Protocol

OpenAI's rollout of the Agentic Commerce Protocol confirms our strong belief at Prompttracker that future websites will be visited more often by agents than by humans. The Agentic Commerce Protocol is one of many steps in OpenAI’s head-on battle with Google and Amazon to win over consumers and capture more of the value chain on the internet. As the rapid growth of ChatGPT continues, OpenAI is implementing a strategic plan to establish a new revenue stream and reshape the power dynamics in e-commerce. Google and Amazon have long dominated product search and shopping, but OpenAI’s in-chat shopping experience kicks off the shift from traditional search engines and e-commerce platforms toward conversational agentic shopping.

Below, we explore our hypotheses about this agentic future and its implications

1. Website Aesthetics Become Redundant in an AI-first web

When AI agents become the main consumers of web content, website aesthetics will be less important than AI’s ability to parse the site’s content. A beautiful, intuitive UI will not influence an AI agent; clear, well-structured content will. If your websites are not built for agents, they might overlook content or fail to complete tasks, leading to revenue loss.

2. Informational Sites Face Traffic Decline and Affiliate Revenues Suffer

Informational websites already see a sharp drop in human visitors and an increase in agentic visits as the answer engines (ChatGPT, etc) and their usage keep increasing. This means that informational websites and pages need to optimize for AI agents visiting instead of humans clicking around. With this sharp decline in human visitors to informational websites, there will be a loss of affiliate revenue.

3. Answer Engines keep driving Higher Conversion Rates compared to traditional search engines.

While overall traffic from answer engines might be lower than from traditional search engines, the conversion rates are proving to be much higher. There are two key reasons for this: (1) users are more informed when they click through, and (2) agents are better at recommending the right products based on user context. For brands and retailers, this means getting recommended by an AI assistant can directly boost sales.

Adapting to the Agentic Commerce Era

For marketers and SEO specialists, OpenAI’s instant checkout and the broader trend of agentic commerce drive the need to rethink strategies. Optimizing your content and website for a new audience segment, AI agents, becomes key for growth as more online stores integrate with the agentic commerce protocol. The agentic commerce protocol is merely the beginning of OpenAI’s strategy to capture more of the value chain on the internet. Companies who lead the vanguard by optimizing their website for AI agents and boosting their content’s visibility in answer engines will position themselves to thrive in this new landscape.