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AI shopping agents set to become marketing's 'biggest battleground' October 14, 2026 4:08 WPP Media's Marc Lomas believes retail sites will ultimately have to "bend to the will of the consumer" The rise of AI shopping agents is poised to create the marketing industry's "biggest battleground" yet, as retailers and tech giants fight for control over how consumers discover and buy products, according to WPP Media's Marc Lomas. Speaking at WPP Media's Future Series event in Sydney, Lomas said a showdown was brewing over whether retailers allow third-party AI agents to browse and transact on their websites, or block them in favour of their own tools. His comments follow recent clashes in the US, where Amazon has moved to block AI agents such as Perplexity's Comet browser and Meta's shopping agent Muse. Lomas, who leads WPP Media Australia's commerce division, said agentic commerce's future would depend on retailers' willingness to open their platforms to third-party agents, as well as whether retailers "bend to the will of the consumer". Responding to an audience question about agentic AI's effect on retail media, Lomas said: "It's probably one of the biggest battlegrounds that we're seeing. "I think we're going through a lot of legal back and forth, especially in the US, and I think it's going to entirely depend on whether big marketplaces, and especially local big retailers, allow agents to transact on their site, and scan their site and browse their site, or we see a big payoff where they block those agents and bring in their own agents instead." Lomas was unable to predict what the final outcome would look like, but said that ultimately retailers would have to respond to consumer demand. "It's going to entirely depend on whether those sites open up to third-party agents," he said. "And also I think the level at which consumers adopt it, because those sites will have to also bend to the will of the consumer." Lomas noted that the shift is already gathering pace in Australia, with Google's Merchant Centre opening up agentic checkout to brands including Bunnings, Kogan and The Iconic. "Many more [retailers] have already signed up to this and are actively moving in this space," he added. Re-architecting. While tech giants face off in the US, Australian marketers will have plenty to do in the meantime to prepare for consumers adopting shopping agents in place of traditional search engines and browsing. WPP Media managing director of digital solutions Daniel Benton told the audience that brands would need to ensure their digital infrastructure was ready for AI agents to discover products and, increasingly, complete transactions on consumers' behalf. "We need to re-architect for agent action, so we need to make sure the tactical rails are in place," he said. "Everything that is available in the open internet is fuelling LLM discovery [and] understanding of your brand," Benton pointed to a case study involving an unnamed global consumer electronics company, which WPP Media worked with to rebuild its website to make it more accessible to AI systems and better answer the questions posed by large language models. The result of the project was that ChatGPT became the company's number one referral source and a "significant source of new revenue sets". "It is eminently achievable," he said. "It just requires cross-functional focus and some determination to get there," Benton said. "We need to own the interrogation and understand how our brands are showing up; understand what people are actually looking for and making sure there's no drift or gap or misconceptions in the results within AI." The rub, however, lies in measurement, with Benton saying marketers would need to establish entirely new benchmarks to understand AI's role in brand discovery and consumer behaviour. "Unfortunately, there's not a single class of measurement that actually solves for AI visibility or agentic commerce," he said. "Unlike with web analytics, where tools such as Adobe and Google Analytics that are quite self-contained, we will need to have a much more holistic approach to measurement." This, he explained, would ideally consist of AI visibility tracking, measurement of user agents, bots hitting sites, web analytics, referral traffic and data from marketing mix modelling to understand how the different factors interact. "There's a bit to be done," he added. "It is super exciting though." Eleanor Dickinson is a journalist with more than a decade of experience across the UK, Middle East, Asia and Australia. She served as editor of Mumbrella Asia from 2017 to 2018, before spending seven years reporting on technology in Australia. She returned to Mumbrella as chief reporter in September 2025. Have your say. Or comment anonymously Your comment will be marked as unverified

Publicis Groupe appoints kristen Mascarenhas as Group Head. Kristen Mascarenhas takes on the role of Group Head at Starcom, following a brief stint at WPP Media and previous roles at Mindshare and Merkle Sokrati. Kristen Mascarenhas has joined Starcom, part of Publicis Groupe, as Group Head, following a brief stint at WPP Media. Mascarenhas announced the move on LinkedIn. She joins Starcom after spending around three months at WPP Media, where she took on the role of Associate Vice President - Client Services in August 2026. Prior to WPP Media, Mascarenhas spent over three years at Mindshare, joining the agency in August 2023 as Manager - The Exchange and later progressing to Director - The Exchange. Earlier, she had two stints at Merkle Sokrati. She first worked with the company as Associate Manager from February to October 2022 before rejoining in January 2023 as Manager - Business Strategy, a role she held for eight months. Found this useful? Share it with your team See more Marketing Mind stories on Google Add The Brand Sigma as a preferred source and its stories will show up more often in your Top Stories. Raman Goyal has been elevated to Senior Vice President at Niva Bupa Health Insurance, where he previously served as Vice... CheilX has appointed Tania Sinha to lead its Delhi office and oversee business expansion across the region. Sinha has joined...

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