Agentic commerce is spreading. OpenAI just launched Instant Checkout, akin to Perplexity’s Buy With Pro, offering shoppers conversational shopping from curiosity to checkout without redirecting consumers to merchants’ sites. Instant Checkout enables free and paid ChatGPT users across the US to purchase directly from Etsy sellers on ChatGPT’s interface. A partnership with Shopify merchants is forthcoming. Zero-click search’s application to shopping means that consumers can now buy from answer engines’ results pages without having to click through to merchants’ owned and operated properties.
The protocol powering this experience — OpenAI’s Agentic Commerce Protocol — accelerates answer engines’ arms race to win agentic commerce. Unlike Google’s Merchant Center (which is free and subsidized by Google’s ads) and Perplexity’s Buy With Pro (which is reserved for paid subscribers), OpenAI requires merchants to pay a small fee to gain access to high-intent audiences. Merchants remain responsible for shipping, customer service, and returns, with payments and chargebacks processed by OpenAI’s launch partner, Stripe. This is a big step toward OpenAI becoming a Rakuten-like affiliate network and Amazon-like marketplace for third-party sellers. By monetizing via affiliate links and diversifying revenue sources, OpenAI won’t have to sell ads as soon as possible.
Zero-Click Search And Shopping Minimizes Time To Value For All Kinds Of Buyers
The launch of OpenAI’s Instant Checkout and the Agentic Commerce Protocol acts on leading indicators of consumers’ desire to shop via answer engines. A quick pulse check using Forrester’s Market Research Online Community revealed that 18% of adults in the panel already use ChatGPT to shop for discretionary products. Many do so because answer engines like ChatGPT and Google’s AI Mode minimize shoppers’ time to value while making them more informed. And it’s not just consumers; it’s business buyers, too. According to Forrester’s Buyers’ Journey Survey, 2025, 28% of business buyers who used generative AI to inform their purchases report spending less time doing research as a result of genAI. Nonetheless, 57% of respondents consider more or different vendors due to genAI tools.
As shopping increasingly begins and ends on answer engines’ results pages, ad dollars will, too. Eventually, ChatGPT will feature ads in the vein of Perplexity’s sponsored follow-up questions and Google’s to-be-released search ads in AI Mode. Seventy percent of US B2C marketing execs already say they would shift spend from retail media networks like Amazon and Walmart to answer engines like ChatGPT and Perplexity, per Forrester’s Q3 2025 CMO Pulse Survey. There are nearly 275 retail media networks around the world, but that market will shrink as answer engines siphon commercial intent from retailers’ owned and operated properties.
Answer Engine-Powered Commerce Benefits From Past Pioneers
Answer engine-powered commerce off merchants’ sites builds on the foundation laid by commerce’s digital transformation. First, e-commerce taught merchants how to reduce shopping’s friction and advertisers how to harvest commercial intent. Then, social commerce demonstrated how compelling creative can visually persuade broad audiences and compress the funnel. Voice search highlighted the challenge of creating commercial intent where audiences merely seek information. Now, answer engines are applying these lessons to develop commerce that is stickier, fuller-funnel, and more intuitive than its antecedents.
Marketers are already responding. Per Forrester’s Q3 2025 CMO Pulse Survey, 92% of US B2C marketing execs are developing strategies for agentic commerce. Strategies dictate tactics such as cleaning and structuring product data to ensure that engines are fed accurate, detailed information and optimizing content’s authority and indexability to enhance brands’ visibility across answer engines’ digital shelves.
Stay tuned for our upcoming report on answer engine-powered commerce, the proliferation of ads and affiliate links across answer engines, and best practices for how to adapt content, websites, and measurement for the zero-click world. Book a guidance session to get ahead of the curve.
