Retailers have built lucrative revenue streams from retail media networks (RMNs), leveraging on-site ad inventory and first-party transaction data. As the potential grows for consumers to shop through AI agents instead of retailer sites or apps, those data streams and ad surfaces are at risk.

“What happens as consumer behavior starts to shift from using a retailer website or app to just now using ChatGPT or Perplexity to research, find, and buy?” said Kiri Masters, founder of Bobsled Marketing and Retail Media Breakfast Club, on a recent episode of the “Retailgentic” podcast. “You’re not going to that retailer [site] or the app… that puts this whole offsite retail media business at risk for retailers because they don’t have the transaction data.”

But in an AI-powered shopping world, loyalty perks can also influence where an agent “chooses” to shop for the consumer.

• AI agents can factor in non-price attributes that matter to the shopper—like gas rewards, free samples, exclusive products, or bonus points.
• “If a retailer has a really strong loyalty program, that’s potentially going to factor into my criteria,” said Masters, noting that even if one retailer is a little more expensive, some consumers may choose to buy from them because they want a specific loyalty perk.

Because loyalty isn’t just about discounts—it’s about integrating into the consumer’s personal preferences.

“You can differentiate on fulfillment speed. You can differentiate on ease of returns. You can differentiate… on unique selection and having more homegrown brands,” said Masters.

With, not against: While some retailers may try to wall off their ecosystems to protect ad revenues, it may be more beneficial to treat AI agents as a new form of high-volume, high-influence customer, according to Masters.

• “The agents are your number one customer,” she said. “If we can actually get a preferential standing with these agents, we can win a lot of the pointy end of consumers.”
• Retailers that optimize their systems for AI integration—through crawlable sites, robust APIs, and open access—will be better positioned to win share.

Ultimately, brands will shift ad spend to wherever consumers (or their AI proxies) are making decisions, meaning retailers must act now to protect their share of ad dollars.

“Brands are just going to chase whatever surface people are spending time on,” said Masters. “So once those ads [are] available in these LLMs, they’ll migrate some portion of their spend over there as quick as they can.”

This article was prepared with the assistance of generative AI tools to support content organization, summarization, and drafting. All AI-generated contributions have been reviewed, fact-checked, and verified for accuracy and originality by EMARKETER editors. Any recommendations reflect EMARKETER’s research and human judgment.

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