What agentic commerce means for commerce media

Future-proofed commerce media networks won’t just be ad platforms. They will become the infrastructure that powers shopping across every channel: on-site, off-site, in-store, and now, through AI platforms like ChatGPT. 

Last week, OpenAI announced that ChatGPT now supports instant purchases via a Stripe integration. This collaboration between two leading tech companies signals a major shift: AI platforms are becoming shoppable surfaces. What’s more, any business or AI system can now implement the Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP), enabling participation in this new form of shopping—what we call agentic commerce.

And just yesterday, OpenAI went a step further, introducing ChatGPT apps via a new SDK. This allows apps from commerce brands like Booking.com and Expedia to run inside ChatGPT (with other brands like DoorDash, Instacart and Target coming soon). What’s striking is that this app integration complements their recent Instant Checkout rollout: OpenAI is weaving commerce and utility deeper into the conversational layer.

We’ve seen this shift coming. But now that it’s real, it’s triggering anxiety in some corners of the commerce media world: If people shop directly through ChatGPT, will my site traffic collapse? And if traffic goes down, will my commerce media network lose value?

In a rapidly innovating space, change is inevitable. This is not the first panic headline this industry has seen. And while the surface may shift, the underlying truth holds: retailers and commerce platforms still control inventory and fulfillment for the brands they sell. That physical and digital infrastructure doesn’t disappear just because the buyer starts in a different place.

So let’s treat this moment not as a threat, but as a mandate to evolve. Here are four actions commerce media networks must take to stay competitive in the age of agentic shopping.

Focus on product sales first

You can’t get commerce media right without getting commerce right, and that includes agentic commerce.

As you think about making products available via agentic shopping, this is a huge opportunity: new buying surfaces mean new places to make scales. But to do this, you’ll need to elevate your product schemas and data quality.

Agentic commerce relies on structured, machine-readable product data. ACP-compliant agents are not clicking through your site—they’re parsing product feeds, interpreting availability, comparing price points, and pulling accurate product metadata in real time.

Networks must adopt (or upgrade) their product schema infrastructure to ensure compatibility. This includes:

• Clean, complete, and correctly categorized product attributes
• Up-to-date inventory and pricing information
• Structured formats compatible with ACP’s JSON Schema standards

Incomplete or outdated product data means missed revenue. Businesses that jump ahead on data quality—like Etsy, which already saw a 16% boost—will be best positioned to win.

Experiment with new monetization and outcome models 

Today’s monetization model is built around traffic—more visitors equals more impressions, more clicks, and more revenue. But ACP introduces a post-click ecosystem where the “click” might never hit your domain.

Commerce media now serves as both a source of demand and a distribution channel, allowing you to provide new value to your vendors. With AI agents completing purchases directly through embedded experiences (like ChatGPT), networks must begin to measure and monetize value that occurs off-site while reframing their value on-site. 

For off-site agentic commerce, consider: 

• Rev-share models on agentic transactions
• Outcome-based pricing (e.g., cost per conversion)
• Inclusion fees for structured catalog ingestion

For on-site commerce media, consider: 

• Fees for merchant inclusion in on-site agentic search
• Premium placement in AI-assisted product environments
• Attribution and measurement services across agentic and owned channels

Your data infrastructure, fulfillment capabilities, and catalog accessibility are now just as valuable as your ad slots. You don’t need to abandon CPMs or CPCs for on-site buying— instead,  augment them with models that reward outcomes, not just traffic. This allows commerce media networks to think of the transition toward agentic buying as a new revenue stream, not a threat to existing ones.

Enable attribution in a post-click world

ACP enables purchases outside of traditional browser-based sessions, forcing commerce media networks to rethink their existing measurement and attribution models.

To get this right:

• Align with AI platforms on how referral metadata (e.g., agent ID, transaction ID) is passed
• Leverage ACP’s support for secure, PCI-compliant payment token delegation to identify the source of a transaction
• Develop internal tools or APIs to match these agent-initiated purchases with your advertising inputs

Just like you’ve had to adapt to post-cookie attribution, you’ll now need to prepare for post-click attribution.

What’s next

ACP isn’t a threat—it’s a transformation. And like any transformation, it will reward the media networks that act early. If your network is only thinking in terms of traffic and impressions, it’s time to evolve.The next wave of commerce isn’t just on-site—it’s everywhere an agent can go.

As commerce media networks extend into new agentic channels, optimizing across every touchpoint, on-site, off-site, and in-store, will become essential. This is just the beginning of the conversation. In Part 2, we’ll go deeper into how to strengthen your on-site experience, from preferred placement and agentic search integration to the next frontier–extending first-party data and personalization strategies into AI platforms like ChatGPT.