"It is official. The humble web browser is now an AI agent, too, and it will almost certainly impact ecommerce. When it announced a new browser, Atlas, on October 21, OpenAI confirmed the latest trend in artificial intelligence. AI companies are building models directly into the primary internet experience. These AI browsers summarize pages, compare options, and complete tasks without leaving a tab. They produce, in a sense, a new kind of zero-click."
"ChatGPT Atlas is not the first. Perplexity's Comet, The Browser Company's Dia, and Sigma are part of the same emerging class of AI-assisted - or perhaps AI-first - browsers, designed to transform the internet from a landscape of links into a unified workspace. Incumbent browser makers are not to be left out. Google Chrome, Opera Neon, Brave, and Edge Copilot all offer various blends of AI and browsing. Together, these agentic browsers signal a redefinition of how people move from search to purchase."
"For nearly 30 years, the online buying journey has followed the same path and pattern, a combination of impression, click, browse, product page, cart, checkout. Every stage of that journey generated a data signal and an opportunity for advertisers and marketers to target a keyword, insert a bid, or buy a sponsored listing. Search engine optimization, retargeting, and affiliate links fed the sequence. Some of these steps are fundamental - or at least we think they are. Other patterns will change."
Web browsers have become AI agents, embedding models that summarize pages, compare options, and complete tasks within the viewport, creating new zero-click experiences. Examples include OpenAI's Atlas, Perplexity's Comet, The Browser Company's Dia, Sigma, and AI features in Chrome, Opera Neon, Brave, and Edge Copilot. These agentic browsers can keep users inside a single workspace rather than driving clicks across multiple merchant sites, altering the traditional search-to-purchase flow. The long-standing online buying journey—impression, click, browse, product page, cart, checkout—generated actionable marketing signals that supported SEO, retargeting, and affiliates. Emerging agentic commerce models, outlined by McKinsey, propose alternative shopping flows.
Read at Practical Ecommerce
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