The Future of eCom in 11 Slides: My Notes From Profound’s AI Search Conference

11 slides to understand the impact AI is having on e-commerce and purchasing behaviour

On Wednesday, I attended a conference by Profound on AI search. There were four hours of talks and over 100 slides - here are the 11 slides you need to know about (as always with an eCom focus).

Agentic commerce is feed-based but AI citations are PDP copy-based

I really liked how this visual was simplified and broken down & by far the biggest point to address/summarise.

We’ve done so much PDP optimisation for AI visibility growth this year, see the chart below where we’ve taken AI visibility from est. 40% to 62% while all other competitors are flatlining - largely from PDP optimisations:

For agentic commerce, we’ve already been doing work with clients this year on owning their feeds.

We made this move at the end of 2024 mainly due to the new Google Shopping rollout in the US and the high volume of organic results now appearing in Shopping results.

When it’s eventually released for GPT, it’ll become even more interesting and will naturally be a significant focus for us next year.

Personally, I don’t think a paid search should own this; there’s no CPC or budget involved - organic search is fundamentally different, and our focus is on longer-tail, content-led approaches rather than paid search strategies.

PDP optimisation weighting

FAQs have a significant influence and are something all e-commerce brands can implement. Some of these other points require more resources.

90% of AI visibility is driven by Digital PR activity

You’ve had your tier 1 media list; now you need your tier 1 GenAI list. We’ll be talking about this more in the coming weeks, showing how much of an influence earned media has on your AI search performance.

The last Substack post ended with the following comment, which is further supported by this slide.

“Digital PR is essential at stage 1 for SEO fundamentals through link building. It becomes valuable again at stage 3, where you need citations on publications that LLM models deem authoritative. There will be overlap, but if you aren’t tracking and adding these sites to your prospect list, you’ll miss out on that competitive advantage and fail to get your brand visible.”

CMO Guide to AEO

How Chat GPT has changed shopping behaviour

I loved this image, previously you’d hunt around but now you get anchored towards the top recommendation from AI - you may end up doing your own additional research around that anchor but it still has a massive impact on behaviour and purchasing decisions.

The era of non-human transactions has begun

Partnerships continue to roll out. Google announced a “buy for me” feature. Examples included “buy me X product when it comes in stock under £200.” It will apparently bundle offers together—if you’re going on a trip and there’s a complementary offer, it will bundle everything and present it to you. (We’ll see if this actually happens or not.)

Coming soon: Try it on features.

Try-on features will soon be available within GPT itself - very impressive if true.

The purchasing funnel has gone dark

This is a great visual and i do agree with this, right now it’s so hard to know where AI search fits in the funnel. Particularly with Anchor bias referenced period, if you find a product you like in GPT it has the potential to take you from awareness to purchase in seconds.

Different LLMs value different sources.

This is just a summary but a key point to address and Mark our Head of PR will be sharing the next Substack which focuses all around this subject.

Each AI has different partners

No actions or commentary here - I just think this may be a useful slide for readers to share internally or reference, since partnerships are being announced so frequently.

Biggest impacts on LLM

Here are some key steps to influence LLM results: enhance FAQs across PDPs and PLPs, optimise product feeds when they launch in the UK, and focus heavily on data and PDP copy optimisation.

Numbers that matter

Here are some stats you can use to make the case for investing in AI Search internally. Note that this survey was conducted before instant checkout launched, so these numbers will likely increase even more now that users can buy directly.

AI Search is evolving rapidly, so these snippets help stay up to date. Please share this with any other eCom leaders who might find it valuable.

The number one takeaway from every speaker: try and test. That’s the first step you need to take before competitors do. Everything is changing fast, and we’re all figuring it out together.