AI is making the first part of the customer journey more frictionless by generating recommendations as shoppers start researching. Neilson Hall, Managing Director Commerce, dentsu UK&I, outlines how AI is rewriting the discovery rulebook.
AI has rapidly become the first step on the customer journey: more than a third of UK shoppers now consult it to find products or services, according to dentsu UK’s latest Consumer Navigator report.
As AI becomes more embedded in how people search for, compare and buy products, these stages are beginning to merge into a single interaction. That shift poses some fundamental questions about how brands can adapt and optimise for a new era of commerce that is increasingly powered by our growing reliance on AI.
Make Your Brand Easy to Find
As shoppers become more accustomed to using AI while conducting their research, the challenge for brands is knowing how to optimise so that Large Language Models (LLMs) can find them. That means ensuring product data, content, and commerce signals are structured for LLMs to interpret and make decisions on behalf of consumers.
AI enables discovery through language prompts and contextual queries. Specificity is critical here. Think of the difference between typing ‘running shoes’ into a search bar versus ‘the best shoes for marathon training that cost less than £150. Consumers are becoming more detailed with their prompts and increasingly expect AI to filter, rank, and recommend products and services.
This represents a monumental shift in how products are discovered, recommended, and shared. It means that brands need to consider their dual audience: humans and LLMs. What’s more, just to complicate matters, LLMs don’t browse websites in the same way that people do; AI is on the hunt for structured information. That might be a combination of transparent pricing, availability, customer reviews, and product specifications.
LLMs look for the strongest signals of relevance; they don’t automatically distinguish between paid media, retail media, and CRM in the way that a person might. That’s why connecting first-party retail data, retailer insights, customer content, and behaviour into a single commerce ecosystem will create a stronger foundation where LLMs can find brands with ease and may subsequently recommend them to audiences.
The Potential… and the Conundrum
One feature of an AI-powered customer journey is that it can compress several decisions around a purchase into a single interaction. This will mean that the most successful brands won’t necessarily be the ones spending the most on media; they’ll be the ones that become the most trusted, integrated, and relevant to LLMs.
Platforms have been eager to integrate commerce directly into AI-led experiences. OpenAI has rolled out ads on ChatGPT, while Google is experimenting with ad formats within conversational AI environments. This allows people to purchase products seamlessly from the very first second that they see an ad.
This poses something of a conundrum for brands because AI starts to sit at the centre of how consumers research and buy, tacitly wrestling control of the experience, data, and customer relationships away from the brand itself.
As AI integrates itself more into the customer journey, brands risk losing intelligence around why certain buying choices are made. In this scenario – when the path-to-purchase becomes shaped by algorithms determining relevance – brands must plug the insights gap in other ways to stay in touch with their audiences.
Reducing Friction, Building Trust
There is no doubt that AI is helping people navigate complex product ranges, answering detailed questions, and speedily identifying the most relevant solutions for shoppers. That would explain why nearly 90 percent of retailers are using or testing AI, and why businesses are recognising its significant impact on customer experience and growth: by 2030, AI is predicted to account for a substantial share of e-commerce transactions.
So, as AI is becoming integral to commerce, the goal for brands is to remain LLMs’ preferred recommendation.
Breaking Through the Conversion Wall
AI-driven traffic to retail sites grew by 180 percent year-on-year in March 2026. However, AI is hitting a wall when it comes to conversion; it stalls after the research and recommendation stage of the customer journey. In fact, dentsu’s Consumer Navigator report revealed that two-thirds of Brits (65 percent) don’t feel comfortable letting AI buy on their behalf. Trust becomes a key issue here.
With time, this will change. Just as shoppers became more comfortable with online and mobile commerce, sales through AI will move beyond product recommendation and actively complete transactions.
Learning how to optimise this will be key for brands, and a cornerstone of a commerce strategy that enables brands to compete in a retail environment where the first touchpoint is not a store, a website, or an app. Instead, working alongside the LLMs to master relevance that unlocks discoverability will become the priority.
