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Agentic AI is changing what it means to be visible, and it all starts with your product feed.
People aren’t shopping like they used to. Customers are still spending, but the simple routine of Googling a product or problem until finding the right fit is a thing of the past.
Today, 37 per cent of customers start their product journey on AI, not Google. Just over half – – are using it specifically to answer questions. Instead of typing queries packed with keywords into search engines, they’re asking Gemini or Perplexity or any other agentic AI tool, “Who has the best denim jacket under $150?”
51 per cent And if you’re using old feed management and SEO practices, your product will never show up as the answer.
The cost of ignoring agentic AI feed requirements
Meet Euro Car Parts, one of the biggest car part suppliers in the UK. Like many e-commerce brands, maintaining Google Merchant eligibility was a top concern. Google does provide an audience in the millions upon millions, after all.
With a quality feed management partner, Euro Car Parts increased its Google Merchant coverage by 20 per cent. And then agentic AI came along, redefining visibility.
“AI doesn’t ask your permission to present your information to answer a user’s query,” Sharon Gee, SVP of AI & Feedonomics at Commerce, says. “It reads your data and it decides. If your catalogue isn’t in the mind of the agent, you’re invisible.”
Even for brands such as Euro Car Parts which were otherwise on top of feed management, AI presented a new challenge. Google Merchant Center coverage alone wasn’t and isn’t enough, especially with an increasing number of shoppers starting their journeys with AI not search engines.
Simply put: what drove visibility a year ago will leave your brand in the dark today.
Same song, different lyrics: modern feed optimisation
Old feed optimisation was all about data standardisation. With the right feed management tools and automation, any online brand could ensure they had accurate attributes, titles, descriptions and so on, distributed across any number of marketplaces.
Modern feed optimisation is still a data-driven song, but the language is more modern than its predecessor. Today, it’s all about data enrichment. What were once simply labelled attributes become wrapped in context.
In this new environment, a leather jacket doesn’t just list “leather” as its fabric attribute – the product description expands, becoming “responsibly sourced premium leather”. Attributes such as “durable” shift to “waterproof and weather resistant”, while “versatile” evolves into “suitable for formal and casual occasions”. Instead of being a mere data point, this type of product description earns a place in the conversational search format made possible by agentic AI.
At a recent Commerce conference, Mike Edmonds, VP of Agentic Commercial Growth at PayPal, explained, “Discoverability is the most critical layer of agentic commerce right now. If your product catalogue is not being pulled into how these recommendations are happening, you are effectively invisible to agent commerce at the most important layer.”
What it takes to deliver enriched product data
Preparing SEO content and delivering agentic AI-ready product data are two different beasts. Again, as Gee pointed out, AI isn’t asking for permission. You need to ensure everything that’s discoverable is found in its finest form. This means including enriched attributes like those mentioned earlier, having structured schema.org data, writing content that both humans and machines can interpret, and most importantly – having consistent data across your entire catalogue and any marketplaces or channels.
That last part is where many businesses fail, as scaling is both a goal of many brands while also their greatest Achilles heel. Fortunately, the right feed management platform can help you automate updates, require you update an entry only once before it’s synced across channels, and more.
None of this is an effort that happens overnight, nor will it deliver results immediately. But, it’s an investment that will pay out more and more as agentic AI continues to reshape shopping and the funnel.
Remember our friends at Euro Car Parts? They began working with Feedonomics and focusing on enriched data after success with general feed management. The results speak for themselves.
“We went through maybe one or two rounds of amends and then we were able to test a very small number of products,” says Dave Cain, Head of Digital Marketing at LKQ Euro Car Parts, when speaking of the company’s rollout of AI Data Enrichment with Feedonomics. “Then, when we got some confidence, we were able to build that out to nearly 25,000 products that we stock and sell.”
In the past year, Euro Car Parts has seen a 67 per cent increase in revenue, 39 per cent increase in sales and 20 per cent increase in return on ad spend.
Enrich now, or forever chase your feed
There’s no time like the present, especially where data enrichment is concerned. Agentic AI has come on in leaps and bounds in the past few years, and it’s unlikely to slow down. And neither is customer adoption of this rapidly emergent product-hunting method.
Modern feed management and data enrichment is a big undertaking, but it’s not impossible. With the right partner and platform, and a strategic approach, you can turn this moment into an opportunity, not a chore.
“How did you go bankrupt?” says Andy Hoar, CEO of Paradigm B2B. “Two ways, gradually then suddenly. Right now we’re in the gradual phase with AI. But I think it’s going to be very sudden at some point. And the question I have for the businesses I talk to is: are you ready for that? Because it’s coming very quickly.”
More than 50 issues are impacting your feed health – learn about them today.