December 5, 2025
burdun/Depositphotos.com
Will Ads Be Disruptive or Beneficial to Conversational Commerce?
Walmart Inc. is experimenting with advertising inside its new AI shopping agent, Sparky, exploring how to monetize chatbot-guided shopping and catch up to Amazon’s Rufus AI assistant.
The retailer tested potential ad formats from September to early November, and is now considering how to proceed, the Wall Street Journal reported last week.
One possible format is a “sponsored prompt” that, when clicked by the user, responds with an answer and a click-to-buy ad. According to a sales presentation viewed by the WSJ, the new ad units leverage Sparky’s conversations for “brand engagement and personalized product recommendations,” marking a departure from the static display ads that currently populate e-commerce sites.
Introduced in June in an update to Walmart’s mobile app, Sparky summarizes customer reviews, compares products, and suggests items meeting various needs via a ChatGPT-style interface.
The ad test comes as agentic shopping, or shopping powered by AI agents that act autonomously on behalf of users, promises to reshape online shopping.
A new study from Adobe Express, based on a survey of 503 business leaders and 504 consumers, found half of all leaders believe AI tools will replace traditional search engines as the primary source of lead generation within five years. Among the consumers surveyed, one-in-five now uses generative AI at least weekly to discover new products, with Gen Z leading at 28%.
Walmart in mid-October announced a partnership with OpenAI to enable direct purchases inside ChatGPT in another move to embrace the shift toward agentic shopping.
“For many years now, eCommerce shopping experiences have consisted of a search bar and a long list of item responses. That is about to change,” said Doug McMillon, Walmart’s president and CEO, at the time. “There is a native AI experience coming that is multi-media, personalized and contextual. We are running towards that more enjoyable and convenient future with Sparky and through partnerships including this important step with OpenAI.”
The push into AI advertising come as Walmart’s high-margin ad business has been experiencing accelerated growth — and agentic AI also promises to reshape online advertising. Instead of bidding on keywords, advertisers will compete to appear alongside AI-generated answers in contextually relevant ways.
Walmart’s Not Alone in Introducing Ads Into Conversational Commerce Channels
The WSJ article indicated that the Sparky test ads have been seeing low click-through rates, but advertisers have shown high interest in exploring impacts from agentic shopping.
Amazon also recently added sponsored prompts to its AI-powered shopping assistant, Rufus, in North America, according to the WSJ report.
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy, on a quarterly analyst call in late October, said customers using Rufus during a shopping trip are 60% more likely to complete a purchase — and that the tool is on track to generate more than $10 billion in incremental annualized sales. Rufus now connects to 250 million active customers.
Lastly, reports arrived in April that Google was now showing ads within conversations produced by AI-powered chatbots, expanding its AdSense of Search tool beyond traditional websites and search results. In October, Meta announced that users’ chats and interactions with Meta AI would soon be used to target them with even more personalized ads.
BrainTrust
Lisa Goller
B2B Content Strategist
Neil Saunders
Managing Director, GlobalData
Nolan Wheeler
Founder and CEO, SYNQ
Recent Discussions
Discussion Questions
How do you think online advertising will change with conversational commerce aided by agentic AI?
Do you see agentic shopping as more of a positive or negative development for retail media networks?
Poll
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If ads are relevant and interesting, I don’t see an issue from a user experience point of view. If they’re annoying and spammy, then it ruins the experience. The slight ‘moral’ issue, of course, is when ‘advice’ from AI chatbots is influenced by sponsorship that isn’t obvious. If, for example, someone asks for the cheapest product and is shown a sponsored product instead, that’s problematic.
With conversational commerce and agentic AI, online ads will continue to evolve from marketing to the masses to targeting individuals with precision. Ads will transform from an often irrelevant nuisance that consumers tune out to a personalized solution that consumers come to value for efficient product discovery.
Before, consumers needed to see an ad 7 times before they flow down the marketing funnel and buy a product. Now it could take a single question in a chat for an ad to convert a customer. Conversational commerce and agentic AI flatten the marketing funnel.
I believe online advertising is set to evolve dramatically as conversational commerce — driven by agentic AI agents — gains momentum. Instead of relying on traditional web-search combined with ad-driven funnels, shoppers are increasingly likely to depend on AI agents that conversationally discover, compare, and buy products for them. This means ads won’t just need to appear in banners or search results — they must be integrated into the logic and data feeds these agents use: comprehensive product metadata, high-quality reviews, optimized catalogs, and relevance at the agentic level. As research from analysts indicates, agentic commerce enables agents to predict consumer needs, explore options, and complete transactions — opening a new frontier for how retail media is assessed and delivered.
I see agentic shopping as more of a positive development for retail media networks than a threat — but with one major caveat: it depends on execution and adoption. For retailers and brands that adapt quickly — standardizing their product data, investing in content that uses AI reasoning (not just human scroll behavior), and embracing new measurement standards — it can boost discoverability, conversion rates, and loyalty. Indeed, some early adopters report faster checkouts, fewer friction points, and better personalization in conversational flows. That said, it’s still early. We don’t yet know how deeply consumers will adopt agentic commerce, how comfortable they’ll be with autonomous buying agents, or how behaviors might change during major shopping peaks (like holidays).
In short: I believe this shift is promising and likely to speed up — but success will depend on how well retailers and ad networks adapt their strategies. The winners will be those who see agentic commerce not as a gimmick, but as a strategic platform: leveraging data, respecting consumer intent, and building trust. Over time, we may look back at this moment as the beginning of a new era in retail advertising — where convenience, personalization, and AI-driven discovery become standard.
My gut reaction is “just answer my damn question!” And I’m not sure thinking more about it is going to change that: when I see the word “monetize “, I usually see the idea as inherently hostile to the consumer.
I think ads can absolutely work in conversational commerce as long as they’re relevant. If the ad supports the shopper, it adds value; if it feels misaligned, it undermines the confidence in the assistant. Done well, it becomes a win-win – the shopper discovers something they need, and the retailer creates a more seamless path to purchase.
Walmart’s low click-through rates on Sparky ads aren’t due to a format issue that requires optimization or improved ad integration. They’re a signal that consumers intuitively resist sponsored content from tools positioned as personal assistants. The solution is to recognize that retail media revenue must come from different sources in an agent-mediated world. This is a strategic timing problem, similar to Blockbuster’s celebration of late fee revenues in 2003. They’re optimizing yesterday’s business model at precisely the moment when commerce rules are changing. The retailers investing in retail media networks for AI assistants may be building the most sophisticated obsolescence in retail history. Retailers need to elevate the discussion to the level of consumer trust: Can platform-controlled agents maintain consumer trust long enough to matter, or will consumer-controlled agents take root and render the whole debate irrelevant?
I only see this trend growing, but the key to advertising in conversation converse isn’t for it to be explicit, it’s more a ‘boost’ (in current search terms), and a more immersive way to show the items in context of the search vs. today’s search is more ‘ask-and-(I hope we)-answered’.
AI shopping agents are changing how people discover and decide and the move to insert ads into those conversations shows how fast this shift is happening. The real question is how far monetization can go before it starts breaking the experience.
When conversational commerce works, it reduces friction and simplifies choice. The moment ads interrupt that flow or tilt recommendations, users will feel it instantly. Trust is the real currency here. Once people suspect the assistant is serving advertisers first, credibility drops fast.
There’s real opportunity in this model, but it requires restraint. Ads should support discovery, not override intent. The brands that win will be the ones that protect the customer’s confidence in the agent guiding their decisions.
Agentic commerce will grow and definitely support retailers Funnel . One thing I really dont know how it will land up improving sales at overall level. It will be tradeoff among retailer only as usual who agent is smart like comparative journey between Chatgpt or Gemini or Perplexity or Deepseek.
Why I am asking this question is because broadline retail (e.g., general merchandise retailers) and Consumer Staples have shown strong earnings growth but majority consumers are reporting that elevated prices, persistent macroeconomic challenges as well e-commerce has been the primary driver of growth.
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If ads are relevant and interesting, I don’t see an issue from a user experience point of view. If they’re annoying and spammy, then it ruins the experience. The slight ‘moral’ issue, of course, is when ‘advice’ from AI chatbots is influenced by sponsorship that isn’t obvious. If, for example, someone asks for the cheapest product and is shown a sponsored product instead, that’s problematic.
With conversational commerce and agentic AI, online ads will continue to evolve from marketing to the masses to targeting individuals with precision. Ads will transform from an often irrelevant nuisance that consumers tune out to a personalized solution that consumers come to value for efficient product discovery.
Before, consumers needed to see an ad 7 times before they flow down the marketing funnel and buy a product. Now it could take a single question in a chat for an ad to convert a customer. Conversational commerce and agentic AI flatten the marketing funnel.
I believe online advertising is set to evolve dramatically as conversational commerce — driven by agentic AI agents — gains momentum. Instead of relying on traditional web-search combined with ad-driven funnels, shoppers are increasingly likely to depend on AI agents that conversationally discover, compare, and buy products for them. This means ads won’t just need to appear in banners or search results — they must be integrated into the logic and data feeds these agents use: comprehensive product metadata, high-quality reviews, optimized catalogs, and relevance at the agentic level. As research from analysts indicates, agentic commerce enables agents to predict consumer needs, explore options, and complete transactions — opening a new frontier for how retail media is assessed and delivered.
I see agentic shopping as more of a positive development for retail media networks than a threat — but with one major caveat: it depends on execution and adoption. For retailers and brands that adapt quickly — standardizing their product data, investing in content that uses AI reasoning (not just human scroll behavior), and embracing new measurement standards — it can boost discoverability, conversion rates, and loyalty. Indeed, some early adopters report faster checkouts, fewer friction points, and better personalization in conversational flows. That said, it’s still early. We don’t yet know how deeply consumers will adopt agentic commerce, how comfortable they’ll be with autonomous buying agents, or how behaviors might change during major shopping peaks (like holidays).
In short: I believe this shift is promising and likely to speed up — but success will depend on how well retailers and ad networks adapt their strategies. The winners will be those who see agentic commerce not as a gimmick, but as a strategic platform: leveraging data, respecting consumer intent, and building trust. Over time, we may look back at this moment as the beginning of a new era in retail advertising — where convenience, personalization, and AI-driven discovery become standard.
My gut reaction is “just answer my damn question!” And I’m not sure thinking more about it is going to change that: when I see the word “monetize “, I usually see the idea as inherently hostile to the consumer.
I think ads can absolutely work in conversational commerce as long as they’re relevant. If the ad supports the shopper, it adds value; if it feels misaligned, it undermines the confidence in the assistant. Done well, it becomes a win-win – the shopper discovers something they need, and the retailer creates a more seamless path to purchase.
Walmart’s low click-through rates on Sparky ads aren’t due to a format issue that requires optimization or improved ad integration. They’re a signal that consumers intuitively resist sponsored content from tools positioned as personal assistants. The solution is to recognize that retail media revenue must come from different sources in an agent-mediated world. This is a strategic timing problem, similar to Blockbuster’s celebration of late fee revenues in 2003. They’re optimizing yesterday’s business model at precisely the moment when commerce rules are changing. The retailers investing in retail media networks for AI assistants may be building the most sophisticated obsolescence in retail history. Retailers need to elevate the discussion to the level of consumer trust: Can platform-controlled agents maintain consumer trust long enough to matter, or will consumer-controlled agents take root and render the whole debate irrelevant?
I only see this trend growing, but the key to advertising in conversation converse isn’t for it to be explicit, it’s more a ‘boost’ (in current search terms), and a more immersive way to show the items in context of the search vs. today’s search is more ‘ask-and-(I hope we)-answered’.
AI shopping agents are changing how people discover and decide and the move to insert ads into those conversations shows how fast this shift is happening. The real question is how far monetization can go before it starts breaking the experience.
When conversational commerce works, it reduces friction and simplifies choice. The moment ads interrupt that flow or tilt recommendations, users will feel it instantly. Trust is the real currency here. Once people suspect the assistant is serving advertisers first, credibility drops fast.
There’s real opportunity in this model, but it requires restraint. Ads should support discovery, not override intent. The brands that win will be the ones that protect the customer’s confidence in the agent guiding their decisions.
Agentic commerce will grow and definitely support retailers Funnel . One thing I really dont know how it will land up improving sales at overall level. It will be tradeoff among retailer only as usual who agent is smart like comparative journey between Chatgpt or Gemini or Perplexity or Deepseek.
Why I am asking this question is because broadline retail (e.g., general merchandise retailers) and Consumer Staples have shown strong earnings growth but majority consumers are reporting that elevated prices, persistent macroeconomic challenges as well e-commerce has been the primary driver of growth.