AI Shopping Agents Threaten the Retail Ad Networks of Amazon and Walmart

The two companies run the largest retail media networks in the United States, with a combined 88% of a market Emarketer puts at $74.4 billion. Those networks depend on people scrolling through search results and product pages, where brands pay for sponsored placements and banners. An agent that searches, compares and checks out for a shopper never looks at those ads. If agents take over enough product searches, fewer people see the placements, and ad prices could fall even as online sales keep growing.

The shift could be large. Morgan Stanley analysts estimated in July that AI shopping agents could handle 10% to 20% of US online retail spending by 2030.

Advertising matters to both retailers. It brings in about 10% of Amazon's net sales. According to LSEG data, Amazon's third-quarter ad revenue grew 11% from a year earlier, its slowest growth in nearly four years. Walmart's chief financial officer, John David Rainey, said on the company's second-quarter earnings call in August that newer businesses such as advertising accounted for 45% of the growth in quarterly operating income.

Amazon's Defence

Amazon has mostly tried to keep outside agents off its site. In September it banned Meta's Muse shopping assistant, saying the agent accessed its store without permission and stored customers' login details. In March, Amazon won a court order blocking Perplexity's Comet browser agent from shopping on its site. A federal appeals court overturned that order in August, and the lawsuit is continuing.

Andy Jassy, Amazon's chief executive, said last week that outside agents had not yet had a significant effect on the company's ad sales.

Walmart's Opening

Walmart has taken the opposite approach. On October 21 it launched a system that lets third-party AI agents shop its site. Customers can link an agent to their account and either approve each order or set spending limits. Walmart is also working directly with Meta on Muse.

Both retailers are trying to put ads inside the AI tools they control. Walmart is testing advertising in Sparky, its shopping chatbot, and Amazon has added ads to its Alexa for Shopping assistant.

Marketers are not yet changing their budgets. Amie Owen, chief client officer at the digital commerce consultancy Flywheel, told Reuters in an interview: "We are not recommending that clients fundamentally shift their retail media budgets overnight." She added: "But we are advising them to prepare for how discovery and purchase decisions may evolve." Morningstar analyst Brett Husslein called the change "an evolution rather than an existential threat" for retail ad networks.

Some of the largest advertisers are already preparing. Procter & Gamble, Nestlé and L'Oréal are rewriting their product listings with clearer data so AI chatbots can read and recommend their goods. Emarketer forecasts that brands will spend 22.6% more on US retail ads in 2026 than the $60.7 billion they spent last year. The question for both retailers is how much of that spending stays on their own pages once agents start doing more of the shopping.