When autonomous shopping agents start making product decisions on behalf of consumers at scale, the retail world will change forever. Retailers already are experimenting with AI-powered product recommendations, dynamic promotions and personalization. But in this new era of agentic commerce, when AI agents research, compare and complete purchases for people — autonomously — one critical question rises above the rest:
How will this monumental shift in commerce be monetized by the entities enabling it?
It’s a question many headlines and product demos don’t discuss openly. Yet the answer matters a lot for retailers: if agents are going to be the ones initiating and completing transactions, how do brands ensure they have sufficient agent visibility, compete effectively for choice and pay in the most cost-effective way? The answer could be hiding in plain sight: the affiliate marketing model.
The Scale of the Coming Shift
Agentic commerce isn’t speculative anymore. Gartner estimates that by 2028, shopping agents will replace 20% of the human interactions at ecommerce sites. Ark Invest projects that agentic AI could generate $9 trillion in ecommerce sales by the end of the decade.
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Leading platforms including Amazon, PayPal, Visa, Mastercard and Shopify are already building products and systems to help consumers let agents shop for them.
For retailers, this is far from an ancillary trend. Agentic AI promises to be a wholesale restructuring of how product discovery, comparison and purchase decisions will be made.
Why the Affiliate Model Fits Retail Agentic Commerce
The beauty of affiliate marketing has always been its simplicity: retailers pay publishers (or platforms) only when a sale happens. In a world where AI agents could be considered the new “publishers,” that same logic holds.
For one, in the affiliate marketing model, incentives are aligned. Retailers avoid wasted spend on impressions or clicks that don’t convert. Instead, they pay commissions that can be attributed to completed purchases initiated by agents.
Another element of the affiliate model that will contribute to its success in agentic commerce is its existing tracking and attribution infrastructure. Affiliate networks have spent decades building the technical “plumbing” to track transactions across browsers, apps and devices. Those same tracking mechanisms will be vital for the “machine-to-machine” commerce between agents and retailers that’s to come.
Performance-based marketing models may also become the preferred pricing model for retail media. Retail media networks (RMNs) today run on CPM, CPC or flat-fee pricing. But in an agentic commerce future, those pricing models lose relevance: after all, agents have no eyes to see retail banner ads, links or branding intended for human shoppers! Instead, as Kantar notes, CPA and revenue-share pricing will likely dominate, possibly reshaping RMNs into affiliate-like ecosystems, complete with new metrics such as “cost per agent conversion.”
Even Sam Altman of OpenAI floated a theory for ChatGPT’s possible path to monetization at scale. When asked how AI might monetize recommendations, he suggested a model where, “…if you buy something through Deep Research that you found, we’re going to charge like a 2% affiliate fee or something.”
Retail Benefits from Agentic Shopping: Efficiency, Transparency, ROI
For retailers, affiliate-driven agentic commerce unlocks several key advantages.
First, greater efficiency. Commerce platform provider Kibo reports that companies deploying AI shopping agents are delivering 30% more conversions and 40% faster order fulfillment. The affiliate pricing model ensures retailers only pay for those incremental gains when they materialize as sales.
Second, offers can be dynamically customized and delivered at the point the agent undertakes a transaction. Kantar predicts that retailers will develop APIs that can syndicate real-time offers (e.g. discounts, shipping upgrades, loyalty bonuses) to AI agents. The shopping agent will then prioritize retailers offering the best net value for the consumer – a perfect use case for the dynamic commission capabilities enabled by many affiliate networks.
Finally, the affiliate model requires an element of transparency and trust. Consumers are currently wary of outsourcing their shopping to an agent: communications platform Omnisend found that 66% of consumers say they wouldn’t allow AI to purchase on their behalf, citing concerns about trust and privacy.
In this environment, affiliate disclosures, already required in human-facing commerce, become even more critical. When agents explain that they may be earning commissions on transactions and that the consumer could benefit from those commissions (e.g. via cashback or loyalty points), trust increases. In fact, in Wildfire’s 2025 consumer shopping trends report, 75% of respondents agreed that they would trust AI recommendations more if they received something back themselves for buying a product the tool suggested.
How Retailers Should Prepare Now
Agentic commerce is accelerating quickly. Retailers that wait will cede ground to those who adapt early. We recommend three steps to start preparing:
1. Affiliate network integrations.
Retailers should ensure their affiliate programs expose the right product feeds, metadata and API endpoints to AI systems. Structured data, including current pricing, availability, reviews and loyalty offers, becomes the new SEO. Agents will prioritize feeds they can parse and compare easily.
2. Build agent-friendly infrastructure.
Retailers should prepare infrastructure now to accommodate new patterns of interaction. When agents shop, their behavior can resemble fraud to existing systems, with rapid clicks, unusual navigation or even cart activity without a clear user session. To stay ahead, retailers should provide safe, structured ways for agents to interact with shopping experiences. This could include authenticated APIs, agent-specific checkout flows or metadata tagging that distinguishes agent activity from bot traffic. The goal is to enable it securely and profitably in order to capture the opportunity early.
3. Rethink retail media economics.
As agents erode the value of display impressions, RMNs should evolve by leaning more into performance-linked pricing. That means shifting more of their budgets toward CPA and affiliate commissions, creating a win-win for both merchants and the AI platforms delivering the sales.
4. Double down on loyalty integration.
When a brand pays an affiliate commission, that money doesn’t only have to go to the agent platform. Retailers can take part of it (or structure it) to also benefit the end customer. Instead of treating the affiliate fee as a marketing expense, a retailer can redirect some of that cost into its loyalty program in the form of cashback, bonus points, or personalized rewards, so the consumer sees the benefit directly. This creates a flywheel of retention where both the agent and the shopper see tangible benefits from choosing your brand: AI agents see more value in recommending retailers that generate consumer rewards, while customers have greater incentives to keep shopping with the same brand.
The Retailer’s Imperative
The retail industry has always adapted to shifts in consumer behavior, from the rise of ecommerce to mobile shopping to social commerce. Agentic commerce is the next wave, and it is moving faster than most anticipate.
Affiliate marketing offers a proven, scalable and retailer-friendly way to monetize that commerce. It ensures that marketing dollars are spent only when a purchase is made, while leveraging infrastructure that already exists. More importantly, it gives retailers a way to align with the very AI agents that will soon be driving a significant chunk of online sales.
Tristan Barnum is CMO and Head of AI Innovation at Wildfire Systems, where she helps brands, banks and platforms prepare for a world where AI agents are shopping on our behalf. She’s focused on building loyalty and monetization tools for this next wave of commerce, like RevenueEngine and AI-powered cashback experiences, ensuring consumers get rewarded and brands stay relevant in the agent era. A longtime entrepreneur, Barnum has built her career around disruptive technologies, by co-founding startups in IoT analytics and VoIP communications and getting her start pioneering digital media delivery at mp3.com
