Personalization has been one of marketing’s biggest promises for well over a decade. The technology has improved, the data has multiplied and the number of channels available to marketers has exploded. However the industry still hasn’t truly delivered on that promise.
We sat down with John Bates, Chief Product Officer at Wunderkind, to discuss why that could be about to change. From the rise of agentic shopping and increasingly high-intent customer journeys to the growing importance of trust, identity and AI-powered personalization, John is helping shape Wunderkind’s response to a new era of commerce.
As AI moves from answering questions to acting on behalf of consumers, agentic commerce could fundamentally reshape how people discover, research and ultimately purchase products. Brands may increasingly find themselves marketing not only to consumers, but also to AI agents representing them.
For marketers, that creates some big questions. What happens when an agent conducts much of the product research? What does personalization mean when fewer interactions take place directly on a retailer’s website? And how should brands prepare for customer journeys that look very different from the ones they optimize today?
Here are four areas John believes marketers need to be thinking about.
Personalization isn’t new. The challenge is delivering it consistently as consumers move between websites, apps, devices and channels.
AI creates an opportunity to change that. John describes “personalization everywhere” as the ability to recognize a consumer’s intent and deliver a consistent, high-intent experience wherever they interact with a brand.
“Ultimately, personalization everywhere is the ability of a brand to deliver high-intent experiences, ensure those experiences are consistent, recognize the consumer’s purpose in being there, and have the brand meet that consumer where they’re at.”
For retailers, that means moving beyond static segments towards interpreting identity, behavior and intent in real time. Wunderkind’s Autonomous Marketing Platform (AMP) is built around this principle, helping brands turn those signals into more relevant, adaptive customer journeys.
Better personalization starts with better understanding of the customer.
Perhaps the biggest change Bates anticipates is that consumers won’t complete every stage of the shopping journey themselves. AI agents could increasingly research products, compare options and eventually make purchases on their behalf.
“A lot of what historically was the consumer journey, a lot of product discovery and research is going to be handled on behalf of the consumer, increasingly by an agent.”
This could mean less website traffic dedicated to research and discovery, but more high-intent consumers when they do arrive. If an agent has already narrowed dozens of options down to a handful, every interaction becomes more valuable.
John also expects the cost of traffic to rise, but argues the greater risk is the opportunity cost of failing to serve that intent.
For marketers, the priority shifts from simply generating traffic to recognizing and acting on intent. As customer journeys become shorter and more concentrated, identity and real-time decisioning become increasingly important.
Agentic commerce won’t eliminate the relationship between consumers and brands, but AI agents could increasingly sit between the two.
“The real question is: how do we deliver consistent experiences, whether it’s a human or it’s an agent operating on behalf of a human?”
That makes trust increasingly important. Brands need to deliver relevant experiences wherever interactions happen while building the confidence consumers need to share first-party information.
That relationship also extends beyond conversion. John describes loyalty as a “new battleground,” making direct customer relationships increasingly valuable.
For marketers, the opportunity isn’t to send more messages. It’s to use identity and behavioral intelligence to make every interaction more relevant and useful.
What will the infrastructure supporting agentic commerce look like? John expects the next two to three years to be something of a “Wild West” as new technologies and commerce protocols emerge.
“The work that gets done today and the technologies that get introduced and adopted will largely influence new standards that ultimately come out of that.”
Rather than waiting for those standards to settle, brands can focus on capabilities that will remain valuable: identity, real-time intent, adaptive decisioning and consistent customer experiences.
John expects a similar shift in advertising, with better context enabling higher-intent targeting. Wunderkind’s role is to provide that context, connecting identity, behavioral intelligence and real-time decisioning to help brands understand who the customer is, what they want and what should happen next.
Agentic commerce is still taking shape, but the direction is clear, AI agents could increasingly handle product discovery and research, leaving retailers with fewer but higher-intent interactions where identity, trust and personalization matter more.
Preparing for that future doesn’t mean replacing the technology marketers already use. It means making it more intelligent. Wunderkind AMP connects customer identity, real-time behavior and AI decisioning with the existing stack to help brands deliver more relevant, adaptive experiences.
As John puts it, there’s an opportunity to finally deliver the highly personalized experiences the industry has promised for decades. The rules of agentic commerce may still be written, but identity, intent and relevance will be fundamental to navigating what comes next.