I first became interested in digital marketing whilst working as a venture analyst for a venture capital company in London. The big question at the time was when we would get 2mb broadband in order that video streaming could be a thing (shows my age!).
I set up my first Google Ads campaign in 2002, just two years after they were launched. Random fact: the first ever Google ad was for a mail-order lobster company.
I digress, the thing that immediately became clear to me was that Google Ads was a game changer. My spend on traditional media was over $200k per annum at the time, that first campaign I set up reduced the spend to $50k and produced significantly more and better-quality leads. I was hooked.
I have spent millions of pounds on Google Ads for companies that I worked for and invested hundreds of millions for my clients into paid and organic media since setting up an agency in 2009.
Fast forward to 2026 and I see a shift in our industry reminiscent of that which I saw when I set up those first Google Ad campaigns. That shift is down to agentic AI and the soon-to-be ubiquitous delegated commerce / decisions.
Think about this scenario. Your customer has access to an agentic AI system (one that researches and takes action on your behalf), they do not go to your website, they merely ask their AI agent to find the best deal on product you sell, at a price point and with a delivery method that suits. The AI agent researches, identifies and selects the product that best suits them. It then asks for their confirmation before it makes the purchase. No humans, no advertising, no human influence involved in the sale. This is the world that is fast approaching; in fact a recent article in Stuff claims that the first agentic AI purchase happened in New Zealand in February 2026:
For the past couple of decades, we have been optimising for clicks, the ‘holy grail’ of marketing. Where we can take the potential customer to our ‘stage’, our painstakingly designed and optimised website, where we could persuade them to buy something.
In my opinion, the era of search engines is nearing its end. I do not say this lightly as I have owned New Zealand’s most successful SEO agency for more than a decade. Tomorrow’s world is that of decision engines. With agentic commerce, your customer is no longer a human browsing from a device; it’s an AI agent, executing a mission for them.
The Shift: From “Answers” to “Delegation”
Last year we looked at millions of data points across Australia and New Zealand and saw a huge fall in traffic (30-40%) because of zero-click search. AI is giving people answers within search; now we are starting to see transactions being handled within AI, zero-click commerce. This year, we will likely see a whole new phase: delegation.
Purchases and decisions are happening in the ‘agentic layer’; a split-second interaction between the user’s AI and the web’s data.
The New Moat: Brand Preference
One of the biggest risks to brands in a world where automated commerce is the norm is that of commoditisation. If the purchaser is looking for some ‘laundry detergent’ the AI agent will be ruthless in its choice; there is no emotion involved, just cold, hard data.
It will find the lowest price item, with the best shipping options and the best reviews. It will optimise for parameters, not your brand’s feelings.
The only way to bypass this ‘race to the bottom’ is to be the default choice. If the user says get me ‘Ecoya laundry detergent,’ the AI stops comparing and just executes. In 2026, the phrase that creatives love using (“your brand is more than your logo”) takes on a new meaning. The brand is the command that overrides the algorithm.
Agentic SEO: Teaching Machines to Choose You
Agentic readiness is currently the key metric that dictates where your organisation is on the path to being able to benefit from this new wave of commerce. It requires a complete rethink of your technical stack and is one of the key activities we have been working on with larger businesses in New Zealand and Australia through our proprietary agentic readiness audit and scoring system.
Machine-legibility is your new UX: Your website’s beautiful design and persuasive copy mean nothing to an AI. Agents need structured data, high-speed APIs, and likely llms.txt files. If an agent is not able to identify stock levels, return policies or adequate security in milliseconds, it will move to a competitor who is “machine-legible”.
Own the Proof: AI agents are risk adverse. They don’t trust what you say about yourself; they trust what the world says about you. They scrape reviews, Reddit, and third-party citations to build a ‘trust-score’. If you don’t own the narrative across the web, you won’t win a decision. Kill the “session” Metric: For years, we’ve used web traffic as a proxy for demand. That’s over. In a delegated world, a successful sale might never result in a single visit to your homepage. We move to incrementality; measuring total commercial impact across all interfaces, not just clicks.
The first step to take as a business is to audit your current situation, look at the data, tagging, speed, structure, and brand reputation. Our proprietary AI Readiness Audit identifies where you stand and what activities you need to take to undertake to benefit from a world of delegated decisions.
The winners of 2026 won’t be the companies with the highest CTR. They will be the brands that are the easiest for AI to find, the safest for an AI to trust, and the most requested for an AI to buy.
The click is dead. Long live the decision.
Richard Conway
CEO, The Optimisers
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Source: Richard Conway, CEO, The Optimisers, 26th February 2026