Source: Beet
eMarketer's research shows that despite hype around AI shopping agents, consumers aren't using them to find unfamiliar brands—they're using them to optimize purchases they were already going to make. AI is compressing the consideration phase rather than expanding it, which creates a real problem for mid-market and DTC brands that depend on the funnel's middle to build awareness and compete against incumbents. The bottleneck isn't in checkout efficiency; it's upstream in discovery, where AI currently acts as a consolidation tool for established players rather than a democratizer of consumer attention.