Thanks for taking the time to thoughtfully break down the emerging agentic commerce space.
I’m curious whether you’ve seen any ACP documentation that explains how surfacing actually works: the logic for filtering, ranking, and deciding which products appear. Submitting a product feed makes a merchant eligible, but it doesn’t determine what gets shown or why. That may not be an issue now but more merchants will join and the ACP shelf space is limited...this feels like it will be a major topic.
On your question about whether ChatGPT will provide analytics or metrics to merchants, my hunch is that merchants will start experimenting with optional or custom fields in the Product Feed to see what influences visibility. Some will inevitably try to “game” it which underscores the need for analytics. Giving merchants insights into why they were or weren’t surfaced could serve as a potential guardrail that keeps the system healthy.
Maybe something to unpack further in a future post?
Thanks Charles, ACP is really all about the data feed/inventory side and the checkout. The spec doesn't talk about how the buyer interface has to work. That being said ChatGPT (via sam altman and on the help pages) has said that the search results are not influenced by the retailer opting in or out of the program. Now what we learned at Amazon is the owner of the buy button wins the lion's share of the orders for a SKU. So I imagine over time that will happen here, 2 exact same offers one with buy button with 'view' - the buy button will be more likely to get more orders as consumers try and love the service.
Thanks for writing this, it clarifies a lot. This series has been really insightful. Your analisys of agentic commerce and the open questions around ChatGPT checkout is spot on. I agree with your perspective completly. Keep up the great work.
Hey @karl - I'd say read the ACP spec, or the overview docs. I've found the anthropic OG agentic paper to be very useful as I wrapped my head around all this. It really depends on what direction you want to go.
Thanks for taking the time to thoughtfully break down the emerging agentic commerce space.
I’m curious whether you’ve seen any ACP documentation that explains how surfacing actually works: the logic for filtering, ranking, and deciding which products appear. Submitting a product feed makes a merchant eligible, but it doesn’t determine what gets shown or why. That may not be an issue now but more merchants will join and the ACP shelf space is limited...this feels like it will be a major topic.
On your question about whether ChatGPT will provide analytics or metrics to merchants, my hunch is that merchants will start experimenting with optional or custom fields in the Product Feed to see what influences visibility. Some will inevitably try to “game” it which underscores the need for analytics. Giving merchants insights into why they were or weren’t surfaced could serve as a potential guardrail that keeps the system healthy.
Maybe something to unpack further in a future post?
Thanks Charles, ACP is really all about the data feed/inventory side and the checkout. The spec doesn't talk about how the buyer interface has to work. That being said ChatGPT (via sam altman and on the help pages) has said that the search results are not influenced by the retailer opting in or out of the program. Now what we learned at Amazon is the owner of the buy button wins the lion's share of the orders for a SKU. So I imagine over time that will happen here, 2 exact same offers one with buy button with 'view' - the buy button will be more likely to get more orders as consumers try and love the service.
Thanks for writing this, it clarifies a lot. This series has been really insightful. Your analisys of agentic commerce and the open questions around ChatGPT checkout is spot on. I agree with your perspective completly. Keep up the great work.
Thanks Daniel!
Hey @karl - I'd say read the ACP spec, or the overview docs. I've found the anthropic OG agentic paper to be very useful as I wrapped my head around all this. It really depends on what direction you want to go.
Loving the articles. Please keep them coming. What else should I read to stay ahead of the game on agentic commerce?