How brands are aiming to build ‘algorithmic trust’ ahead of an AI agent-powered Black Friday

Whether you’ve got your eyes on the latest pair of Meta Ray-Ban shades, a cozy sweater from The Row, or a Ms. Rachel stuffed plushie, shopping may look a little different this holiday season.

While consumers aren’t entirely relying on AI to handle their shopping this gift-giving season, some brands are working to make themselves visible to AI and agentic AI tools that could drive purchases when consumers use them to make purchasing decisions, Amanda Bailey, chief client officer at VML, said.

“Black Friday won’t be won on Black Friday,” Bailey told Marketing Brew. “Agentic commerce fundamentally changes the timeline for peak shopping events. That frenzied human behavior of people rushing or standing in line is really going to be replaced by pre-programmed AI agents that monitor deals for weeks or months in advance. To be chosen and recommended versus discovered will be a new thematic…It’s not just about keywords; it’s about speaking the language of algorithms.”

Slow and steady

Already, consumers are becoming familiar with generative AI tools: 68% of global consumers say they have used AI like ChatGPT, according to VML’s report The Future Shopper 2025 from September, which surveyed more than 25,000 shoppers in 16 countries. There is still room for adoption; while the report found that 47% of global consumers said they loved how retailers are beginning to incorporate AI, only 2% of consumers said they were using AI to make purchases.

Bailey said she expects adoption rates to increase as consumers become more familiar with the power of AI agents. Consumers can supply AI agents deployed by brands with information like their preferences and budget to monitor online storefronts for gift deals that fit consumers’ parameters or inform them when coveted items are back in stock, thereby acting as a personal concierge of sorts for consumers.

“Delegation is the new convenience,” Bailey said. “Trust is the main hurdle to full autonomy.”

New offerings from ChatGPT maker OpenAI, Pulse and Atlas, could also act as drivers of consumer AI adoption, Li Haslett Chen, founder and CEO of creator commerce platform Howl, said. Pulse, which OpenAI announced in September, can proactively research personalized updates for consumers based off of input like their chats and connected apps, while Atlas, OpenAI’s ChatGPT-powered browser that debuted last month, is aimed at “tak[ing] us closer to a true super-assistant,” according to a company blog post.

“We could see that for the first time ChatGPT chooses to proactively put shopping in front of consumers, whether or not they initiated that chat or that action,” Chen told Marketing Brew. “On Black Friday, anyone who has ChatGPT or has Atlas may get a proactive notification that ‘These are the 10 best sales for you right now.’...That would dramatically change the adoption and landscape for AI shopping.”

Ahead of the curve

While consumers figure out AI shopping, brands are working with the tech to surface their products to consumers, Bailey said. One way to do so is collaborating with engineers on the team to encode product information like attributes and use cases in a manner that AI can easily evaluate. Some companies, including Google, have published guidelines on how brands can show up in AI tools like Google’s AI Overviews.

At the same time, brands can work on compressing the path from inspiration to purchase for their products, while still investing in both online and offline touchpoints, according to the The Future Shopper 2025 report.

“Brands need to be understood by machines, not just humans…This really means moving beyond marketing copy,” Bailey said. “Your brand needs to exist as data, not just as creative.”

Building verifiable brand values and an overall strong reputation online can encourage AI to surface products to consumers this holiday season more visibly, too, Bailey said. Fortifying granular company information like ingredient sourcing or certifications with third-party validation can make a brand seem more legitimate to AI agents, encouraging them to surface the brand to consumers, as will authentic brand reviews, Bailey added. That will be a shift for brands focused primarily on building marketing and storytelling to drive growth. Authentic brand reviews don’t hurt, either.

“Develop algorithmic trust,” Bailey said. “AI agents filter out a lot of noise [around] flash sales and emotional appeals.”