The Watson Weekly Weekend edition is sponsored by Avalara - the agentic AI platform automating global tax and compliance for leading eCommerce brands.

The neon lights of Las Vegas are the perfect backdrop for a gamble, but at Shoptalk 2026, the stakes weren’t on the craps table—they were on the future of the interface. Hosting the Agentic Debate at Shoptalk presented by Logicbroker with Chris Silver, Gina Lombardo, and Dave Finnigan felt less like a panel and more like a reality check for the industry.

As I reflect on the arguments, three things are crystal clear. If you aren’t preparing for these today, you’re already behind.

For decades, we’ve built ad empires by interrupting consumers. But LLMs are a different beast. When a user asks an agent to solve a specific problem, a pop-up doesn't just annoy them; it violates a unique trust mechanism.

The takeaway? The traditional display ad is on life support. We are moving toward Cost Per Action (CPA) models. We’re talking about brands paying when an LLM actually does something—like booking an appointment. Success now depends on your data hygiene; if your product catalog isn't enriched for "answer engines," you simply won't exist in the agent's world.

Is agentic commerce a nothing burger? Hardly. It’s a friction-killer for reorders and pre-purchase logistics. However, we can’t forget the retail therapy factor. People still crave the emotional validation of discovery.

For luxury, agents won't replace the experience; they’ll enhance it through contextual upselling—think an agent curating an outfit for a specific event on the coast of Europe. The agent manages the how, but your brand must still provide the why.

Are websites doomed? No, but the brochure and PDF catalog websites are dead. We’re seeing a shift toward websites acting as storytelling platforms for humans and technical sources of truth for agents.

The real work is happening under the hood. Brands are starting to use tools like MCP (Model Context Protocol) to enable AI agents to communicate directly with their backend services.

We’re in an Agentic Fog where even the giants are stumbling. The path forward is to shift investment toward AI-driven personalization and to prepare massive datasets for LLM consumption.

The future isn't about out-smarting the AI; it’s about making your brand's data and "soul" accessible to it. We’re figuring this out together