Meta’s new Muse AI agent can shop for you. Give it something to find, and Muse can search retailers, compare the options, and complete a purchase with your approval. Agentic shopping is far from commonplace, but Muse raises an interesting question for advertisers: what happens when an AI agent handles parts of the purchase journey where advertising currently influences consumers?
What Is Meta Muse?
Meta launched Muse in September as a personal AI agent that performs tasks across websites and apps. Shopping is only part of what it does. Muse can also make restaurant reservations, book appointments, handle returns and refunds, and more. For shopping, it can continue working in the background, such as watching a product for a price drop.
Muse attracted plenty of curiosity out of the gate. Less than two weeks after launch, it reached No. 1 among free downloads in both Apple’s and Google’s app stores. Amazon was less enthusiastic. The company blocked Muse from shopping on Amazon, saying Meta had not received authorization to access its store. Amazon is not alone. Retailers ranging from Kohl’s to Nieman Marcus are blocking agents while others are deciding on a case by case basis how to respond to agents.
Amazon has good reason to pay attention. A shopper using Muse may still buy a product from Amazon without spending much time shopping on Amazon. The research and comparison that once happened on Amazon could happen through an agent controlled by Meta. And this is a potential threat to Amazon’s multi-billion dollar advertising business.
How Could Agentic Shopping Affect Advertising?
Much of digital advertising depends on people revealing what they want as they research a purchase. Advertisers can reach people when they’re on Google searching for things to buy because their behavior provides information about what they are considering.
An AI shopping agent can perform some of that work instead. Someone planning a weekend trip might ask Muse to find a hotel near a particular neighborhood, compare rates and cancellation policies, and identify the best option. The consumer sees Muse’s recommendations rather than every search result, hotel website, and comparison page the agent consulted.
Fewer consumer interactions can mean fewer opportunities to advertise. Search advertising, retail media, retargeting, affiliate marketing, and other forms of advertising built around those behaviors have fewer opportunities to reach consumers during their research.
And yet brands still need to be present when an agent is shopping. Agents need accurate product information and defensible claims when comparing one product with another, whether they’re looking for televisions or garden equipment. So, what’s a brand to do?
What Should Advertisers Do Now?
First off, don’t press the panic button.
Muse’s download numbers should not be confused with widespread adoption of agentic shopping. Only 3% of U.S. adults would trust agents to complete purchases, according to a survey by payments firm NMI, as reported in The Wall Street Journal. Consumers still need to become comfortable delegating decisions and purchases before agentic commerce becomes a routine part of shopping. Advertisers can prepare without making speculative changes to their media budgets. The work starts with the parts of marketing they already control:
- Keep building brand preference. If consumers delegate more product research to agents, the preferences they develop beforehand become more valuable. Brand, product, and category advertising can influence what consumers ask an agent to find in the first place.
- Audit your product information. Review the information an agent is likely to encounter when researching your products. Specifications, prices, inventory, policies, and product claims should be accurate and consistent across the places where products appear.
- Look for changes in how people reach you. AI can insert itself between an advertising exposure and a retailer visit. Watch AI referrals, direct traffic, branded search, assisted conversions, and other indicators that can help explain a purchase journey that may no longer produce the same sequence of clicks.
- Learn from actual consumer behavior before moving budget. Advertisers should track whether their customers actually use agents for product research and purchasing, which product categories gain adoption first, and how the resulting traffic converts.
Agentic commerce does not justify an overhaul of media plans today. Advertisers have more immediate work to do: keep influencing consumers, make product information easy for agents to evaluate, and watch for evidence that customer behavior is changing before deciding where advertising dollars should follow.
True Interactive can help you navigate changes in AI, advertising, and consumer behavior. Learn more about us on our website, and contact us to discuss how we can help you.
Hero image source Dima Solomin, Unsplash
