The most important line in the entire “agentic commerce” conversation isn’t about checkout, protocols, or even AI agents.
It’s this idea—stated plainly by Shopify president Harley Finkelstein—that agentic AI can usher in “merit-based retail,” where discovery shifts from who pays the most to who deserves to be shown based on context. Source: “How AI Shopping Could Turn Fashion Advertising on Its Head,” Vogue Business, Amy O’Brien, January 14, 2026.
If that holds, it’s a structural change on par with the move from malls to Google, and from Google to social feeds. Except this time, the feed is a conversation—and the gatekeeper is an AI personal shopper.
The Old Game: Pay-to-Play Visibility
For the last decade, digital growth was mostly an auction:
- Bid to appear.
- Retarget to convert.
- Scale the budget to scale the outcome.
Even when we talked about “brand,” much of the machinery beneath it was still media spend. The brand with the biggest war chest could stay in front of the customer longer, more often, and more aggressively.
That model works best when the interface is a feed or a search results page—places designed to display options, including sponsored ones.
The New Game: Recommendation, Not Placement
Agentic commerce changes the interface. Instead of “show me results,” it becomes:
- “Find the best option for me.”
- “Compare them.”
- “Pick one.”
- “Buy it.”
Once shopping becomes a multi-step task executed by an assistant, “visibility” doesn’t mean “impressions.” It means “selection.”
And selection is a different currency.
In an agentic world, the customer is no longer scanning a page of links. The assistant is synthesizing, filtering, and recommending. Your product doesn’t win because it showed up. It wins because it was chosen.
What “Merit” Really Means
Let’s be precise: “Merit-based retail” doesn’t mean the world becomes fair. It means the decision engine changes from ad auctions to signal interpretation.
Merit, in practice, becomes:
- Clarity (Can the assistant understand what you sell and who it’s for?)
- Credibility (Is there evidence it works and people are happy?)
- Fit (Does it match the user’s constraints, preferences, and context?)
- Consistency (Does your story match what the world says about you?)
- Reliability (Is the post-purchase experience predictable?)
So yes—bigger ad budgets may matter less. But only because the thing that matters more is the quality of your signals.
Why This Favors Smaller Brands (If They Act Like It)
The paradox is that AI can level the field for brands that historically lost to ad budgets.
A niche brand with a clear point of view, excellent customer experience, and strong reviews can become highly “recommendable” even without massive spend—because the assistant is optimizing for the user’s outcome, not your budget.
This is exactly the opportunity implied in the Vogue Business reporting: if AI shopping experiences are designed to behave like the “best personal shopper,” then the machine has incentive to surface what fits best—not what paid most. Source: Vogue Business, Amy O’Brien, January 14, 2026.
That’s a big deal for modern DTC brands that never wanted to become media buyers in the first place.
The New Moat: Trust Signals at Internet Scale
In agentic commerce, your brand isn’t being judged only by your homepage and your ads. It’s being judged by your entire footprint.
The assistant builds a picture of you from:
- Your product pages and descriptions
- Your FAQs and policies
- Your images (increasingly multimodal)
- Your ratings and reviews
- Your customer support reputation
- Your presence in community discussions and forums
- Your consistency across channels
This is why reviews become strategic infrastructure, not “nice-to-have social proof.” The Vogue Business piece highlights how real customer reviews function as primary trust signals for both shoppers and the AI systems interpreting intent. Source: Vogue Business, Amy O’Brien, January 14, 2026.
Don’t Get Naive: “Merit-Based” Still Gets Monetized
Here’s the devil’s-advocate truth:
The platforms will monetize the conversation.
Vogue Business notes early moves toward in-chat advertising and “direct offers,” plus branded business agents that can speak in a brand voice inside AI search experiences. Source: Vogue Business, Amy O’Brien, January 14, 2026.
So no—ads don’t disappear. They mutate.
But the bar rises. In a conversation, users have lower tolerance for interruption. The “ads” that work will have to behave like relevance, not noise.
You’ll still be able to pay for attention, but you won’t be able to pay your way past weak signals forever. In other words: ad spend can amplify merit; it can’t replace it.
Practical Implications: How to Compete on Merit
If you want to win in agentic commerce, stop thinking like a campaign manager and start thinking like an “AI-readable, human-trustworthy” business.
1) Upgrade product pages from marketing to clarity
Longer descriptions. Use-case scenarios. Constraints. Comparisons. Edge cases. The details that remove ambiguity.
2) Build an FAQ that answers real objections
Not fluff. Operational truth: shipping windows, returns reality, sizing truth, durability, warranties, compatibility.
3) Treat imagery as “understanding,” not just aesthetics
Angle variety, contextual shots, details, scale references—inputs the machine can interpret and the human can trust.
4) Systematize review collection and response
Not to game the system—because reviews are increasingly the machine’s evidence layer.
5) Make your brand narrative coherent everywhere
Agentic systems punish contradictions. Reward clarity. Your story needs to be simple enough to survive retelling by a machine.
Vogue Business quotes strategists arguing that coherent narratives—not the loudest campaigns—will stand out as discovery shifts from “pay-to-play” toward recommendation. Source: Vogue Business, Amy O’Brien, January 14, 2026.
The Bottom Line
In the age of agentic commerce, the competition is no longer primarily for clicks.
It’s for confidence.
Confidence that your product is understood. Confidence that it fits the user. Confidence that your claims match reality. Confidence that buying from you won’t create regret.
That’s what “merit” is going to mean in practice.
And if that becomes the dominant shopping interface, it won’t be the biggest ad budget that wins.
It’ll be the most recommendable brand.