Source: NYT > Business (paywall)
As autonomous AI agents handle purchasing decisions, marketers are moving away from emotional appeals and lifestyle messaging toward comparative specs, price optimization, and algorithmic transparency. The sales funnel compresses. Data-rich, category-neutral brands gain ground over those built on storytelling and brand equity. This rewires the marketing stack. Influencer partnerships and emotional ad campaigns lose relevance for products destined for bot negotiation. Brands must instead optimize for machine-readable product feeds, dynamic pricing, and friction-free API integration. The advantage goes to those who can encode their value proposition into structured data that agents can parse and act on—not to the most creative agencies.