By skyforbes 
E-commerce Management • Artificial Intelligence • Digital Marketing • Roadmap
This guide isn’t futurology. This is a strategic briefing for 2026. It explains why your P&L will soon depend on your API, not your A/B tests.
Customer Needs: Detaching Traffic from the Funnel
For decades, marketers operated in a familiar universe where SEO and PPC generated “traffic.” This traffic was poured into a “funnel,” and our job was “optimization.”
Now, the rules are changing.
The user no longer “googles.” They no longer search “where to buy.” They ask ChatGPT, Claude, or Perplexity, “What do you recommend?” This is the new point where customer needs are formed.
Your hard-won “top rank in Google” is becoming irrelevant. It’s been replaced by the AI assistant’s answer.
If you think your new job is just to “get into the answer” (what some call AVM or LLMO), you’re only seeing half the picture. Today, it’s not enough to show your storefront; you need to have a cash register.
While you’re busy optimizing content for recommendations, AI agents are already learning to sell directly, with no website visit required.
Selling in ChatGPT (The New Conversion Point)
OpenAI has introduced the Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP) — an open standard that allows AI agents to:
- Interact with e-commerce platforms via API.
- Receive real-time data on products, pricing, and availability.
- Initiate payment and ordering directly within the chat dialog.
Right now, any marketer is probably panicking. ACP? API? We’re still figuring out AIO, AIRO, and GSO. This is a CTO problem, right?
Wrong. The Agentic Commerce Protocol is not an “IT problem.” It is your new, highest-converting marketing channel.
ACP is the “language” your customer’s “personal assistant” (the AI agent) uses to “negotiate” with your “warehouse” (your store’s backend). Your website’s beautiful, “seamless UX,” painstakingly built through endless A/B tests, is fading into the background of this transaction.
Payment (Your Shopping Cart is Dead)
Forget the old concept of: “The customer dropped off on step 4 of the cart.”
In the new reality, the “cart” is gone.
In its place is “Instant Checkout.” This is a “cash register” built right into the AI dialog. It’s an overlay on the Agentic Commerce Protocol that collapses your entire 5-step funnel, which entire departments toiled to optimize, into one single action in a ChatGPT window.
Your “funnel” is no longer a funnel. It’s a pipe.
The work of “A/B testing the button color” is obsolete. Your new job is to “earn trust” (AIRO), so the AI agent shows the user your “cash register,” not your competitor’s.
Anatomy of the Perfect B2A Sale
Let’s look at this new customer journey (Business-to-Agent) — from “Need” to “Payment.”
- NEED (User): “ChatGPT, recommend noise-canceling headphones under $200.”
- SEARCH (ACP): The AI agent instantly pings the APIs of all stores that “speak” ACP.
- CHOICE (AIRO):
- The ‘Mammoth Hides’ Store (Legacy): (Silence. They have no ACP-API, or their data is a creative mess the AI can’t read.)
- Your Store (Modern): (Your API replies with clean JSON: “Model ‘Sennheiser 123’, $199.99, 48 in stock, attribute ‘noise-canceling’: true.”)
4. RECOMMENDATION (AVM): The AI agent chooses you. Not because you have a “cool brand,” but because you are “understandable” (LLMO) and “reliable” (AIRO).
5. SALE (Instant Checkout): “I recommend the ‘Sennheiser 123’ from ‘Your Store’. Would you like to buy it?”
6. PAYMENT (User): “Yes.”
Transaction complete. Did you notice a “website visit” in that process? Neither did we.
The CMO’s New To-Do List
Task 1: Audit Your PIM System (This is LLMO)
Stop writing “creatives” for humans. Start structuring “attributes” for machines.
- Technical Standard: Schema.org. This is the “bible” of structured data. AI agents (like Google) use this markup to understand that
199.99is apriceandSennheiseris abrand. Your CTO must know this site by heart.
Task 2: Prioritize the API (This is ACP)
You must go to your CTO, not with a “please look into this” request, but with a spec: “We need an API adapter that speaks ACP. This is our primary sales channel for 2026. Here is the budget.”
- CMO Overview: “Buy it in ChatGPT” by OpenAI. This is your 2-minute pitch explaining why this is necessary.
- CTO Guide: OpenAI Commerce Developer Portal. This is the official entry point for those who will be building the API.
- The “Bible”: The official Agentic Commerce Protocol (GitHub) repository. This is the protocol’s source code. Your CTO will reference this.
- Practical Example: The ACP Demo Repository (GitHub). A ready-made code example that demonstrates the “dialog” between an agent and a store.
Task 3: Build “Trust” (This is AIRO)
Your new KPI is the “AI Agent Trust Score.” Did your API “lie” about stock? Did it respond “slowly”? The AI agent remembers. And next time, it will recommend your competitor. API reliability is now your marketing metric.
Task 4: Rethink LTV
Your new LTV is the LTV of your B2A (Business-to-Agent) channel. Think about it: your new “repeat customer” is the AI agent itself.
If you are “reliable” (AIRO), “understandable” (LLMO), and “fast” (API), the agent will “return” to you every time anyof its millions of users asks for your product.
Your “Purchase Frequency” is no longer about one customer returning. It’s a “constant stream” of new customers delivered by one “loyal” AI agent.
“Loyalty” is no longer a customer’s “love” for your “brand.” “Loyalty” is a machine’s “trust” in your “data.” That is the new LTV.
- API Analytics Tools: (e.g., New Relic, Grafana, or Datadog). If your “repeat customer” is an AI-agent, you need analytics that counts that agent. You must know how many times the ChatGPT-Agent queried your API and what its conversion rate is.
- AIO Analytics Tools: Specialized AIO trackers are required to monitor brand mention frequency.
Note: Our team is launching a platform for analyzing brand frequency in AI answers. It’s currently in early access. If you’re interested in a free 3-month trial — reach out to me directly.
Launch Your Pilot Project
E-commerce without a “site” is not a 2030 concept. It is the technical reality of 2026. AI agents are the new storefronts. Your “site” is the warehouse.
Don’t “rebuild” your entire e-commerce stack or “freeze” your budgets. Start with a small pilot, but start immediately. Right now.
- Take one product category (10–50 SKUs).
- Rebuild its data to the LLMO standard (dry attributes, not creative SEO-fluff).
- Task your CTO with hacking together an ACP adapter (an API-facade) for this category only.
The goal of this “pilot” is not to “make” a million. The goal is to understand the technology. To start building your “trust rating” (AIRO). To learn how an AI agent thinks.
And when your pilot is ready, here is your “first step” toward integration: the ChatGPT Merchant Interest Form. Submit your application so OpenAI knows you are ready for ‘Instant Checkout’.
Good luck. If you have practical questions about conducting an audit or implementing your first pilot project — reach out to me directly, I’m always happy to help. Like and subscribe.