Shopper AIs are here. Who do you advertise to when humans don't shop any more?

Proof-of-concept AIs are already appearing that presage monumental changes in how consumers shop and buy. This has massive implications for online advertising.

Filed under: AI and consumer behavior

For a few weeks, I have been drafting a Substack post explaining why consumer behavior is about to radically change because of AI. Finding time to finish the post has been tough.

But this afternoon I posted a tweet thread that serves as a “preview” of that post. I am embedding that thread here.

My thread was in reaction to a tweet by Harley Finkelstein, President of Shopify:

Harley Finkelstein @harleyf

Pretty insane. Our AI shopping assistant on @shop helping me buy exactly what I need for a yakitori dinner I'm hosting. This is just the beginning of AI x commerce.

The future of how people buy

This was my reaction:

Myles Younger @Myles_Younger

I have been working on a substack post on basically this for a few weeks and can't wait to get it out. This is the future of how people buy. That means fewer page loads and ad impressions as people click around the web less and less. That means #AI chooses products, not people.

Harley Finkelstein @harleyf

Pretty insane. Our AI shopping assistant on @shop helping me buy exactly what I need for a yakitori dinner I'm hosting. This is just the beginning of AI x commerce. https://t.co/wTJ9ShQM7i

Myles Younger @Myles_Younger

To wit, I don't see how the web browser does not tip into secular decline in an AI-powered future where you just don't need to click around on screens as much any more:

mylesyounger.substack.comAI will make browsers obsolete, so don’t sweat the “death of the cookie” thing too much.ChatGPT is a preview of how much LESS we’ll need all kinds of apps. In a few years’ time, clicking around a web browser will seem prehistoric.

Myles Younger @Myles_Younger

And this is happening FAST. One of the reasons it can happen fast is that product and service inventories and buying mechanisms are *already* available via API. This was the pain of the last 20 years as companies moved heaven and earth to get their wares online.

Myles Younger @Myles_Younger

In the near future, instead of a meat sack (a human) pecking around and manually finding things to buy online, an AI will do it. It really was inevitable...sticking a Mechanical Turk in the middle of the process to click things is...less than efficient.

Myles Younger @Myles_Younger

But that Mechanical Turk (i.e., you; me; all of us) saw lots of ads on web pages & in apps! It takes a LOT of page loads to buy things or accomplish tasks online. Discovery, Research/Comparison, Browsing, Checkout, etc. It all adds up to, well, much of the market for digital ads.

Advertising will never be the same again (again)

That was it for my short tweet thread, but I’ll add the following:

My point (or prediction) is not that AI will cause advertising to cease to exist, but that advertising will change. This change will likely be quite painful.

Billions and billions of dollars of ad revenue and media planning are currently predicated on a particular set of consumer behaviors that only date back about 25 years: people navigating around websites and apps; reading, typing, and clicking. In fact, we do so much fussing over sites, apps, and devices that the average American is living a 32-hour day when you account for multitasking.

2023 Activate Tech & Media Outlook

Until now, consumers’ frenetic behavior in the digital sphere has been a great boon to the media and ad world, as it has meant an ever-growing pool of valuable consumer attention to be monetized.

However, consumer behavior is about to change, and so too will advertising.

More to come on this in a future post.