You've heard the new buzzwords: Agentic Commerce, Conversational Shopping, a future where AI assistants buy everything for us. It's a high-tech makeover for affiliate marketing. OpenAI's "Instant Checkout" with Stripe and Shopify could be here. But this time, the affiliate isn't a small-time blogger. It's a trillion-dollar AI about to become the only thing standing between your brand and your customers. If you're in marketing, you can't remain passive.

Sam Altman is playing this smart. He's telling everyone what's what and creating a clear distinction between Google's "bad" ads and his "good" alternative.

“Ads on a Google search depend on Google doing badly. If it gave you the best answer, there’d be no reason to buy an ad above it.”

He's saying that Google's ad business relies on not giving us the best answer! If Google gave you the perfect answer every time, you'd never click those top ads.

He's set up Google as the "bad guy" and ChatGPT as the "good guy" you can trust. He's drawn his line:

“If ChatGPT were accepting payment to put a worse hotel above a better hotel, that is probably catastrophic for your relationship with ChatGPT.”

Sam is making "trust" the main selling point. He's saying ChatGPT wouldn't take a "bad ad" (a paid spot) because that would wreck its only asset: your trust. What's his "good ad"? Surprise... It's a commission! It's just an affiliate fee. Here's what he said about his "aligned" model:

“If ChatGPT shows you its guess – the best hotel... and then if you book it with one click, takes the same cut that it would take from any other hotel, and there’s nothing that influenced it … I think that’s probably OK.”

That's the whole plan. The "good" model is where the AI isn't paid to change the recommendation; it gets paid after you buy the "perfect" thing it recommended. He suggested a 2 percent affiliate fee. This is the business model.

It's hard to understand the size of this thing. McKinsey is talking about a $1 Trillion market by 2030. But the current numbers should make you nervous. We're looking at a market jumping from around $5 billion in 2024 to over $46 billion by 2025!

And the customers? They're already there. People are asking ChatGPT over 84 million shopping questions weekly. 41% of users say they've used AI for shopping.

This new setup will make some people very rich and put others out of business.

The Good Part: Shopping Just Got Easier (And It's Live!)

This is awesome for customers. No one can deny that. Think about the old way: you'd open 20 tabs to Discover (Google), Research (Blogs), Compare (Amazon), and Purchase (the brand's site). That's all gone. Now, it's just one chat.

OpenAI's "Instant Checkout" is live with Stripe, Etsy, and a million Shopify stores. Imagine a customer saying: "I'm moving. Here's my floor plan. Find me a sofa, coffee table, and a rug that fits. My budget is 4,000 CHF. I need it by Tuesday." The AI researches, checks stock, and places the order with Instant Checkout.

The Bad Part: The New Reality is Brutal

1. You're basically invisible. If you're an old-school affiliate, you're done. If you're a brand, know there's no "page 2" on ChatGPT. The AI gives one answer. You're either that answer, or you don't exist. This is a winner-take-all game.

2. You Don't Have a Customer Anymore. The AI Does. Get ready for the new gatekeeper war. We used to fight to "own the customer relationship," right? Get their email, build loyalty. In this new world, the customer's relationship is with ChatGPT, not you. You're the guy in the back who ships the product.

3. The "trust" thing? It's complicated. The line between a 2% "affiliate fee" and a 3% "preferred partner fee" is tiny. What happens when two hotels are "equally good"? You think the AI won't pick the one that gives it a bigger cut? This "trust" thing is a house of cards, and

The new Agentic Commerce Protocol is the "how-to" guide for this. It is an open standard developed by OpenAI and Stripe. It's the rulebook for how your company "talks" to the AI.

Your new game plan is straightforward. It has two parts:

1. Get Your Data in Order. Yesterday. Your #1 job is to feed the AI spotless, reliable, real-time data on everything: your products, stock levels, prices, and shipping times.

2. Plug Into the Protocol. The winning brands will be the easiest for the AI to work with. Your tech team needs to read the ACP docs now. Be ready to be a simple, plug-and-play partner for the AI.

The new war is for non-branded searches. Your goal is to be the AI's recommended product when someone asks for "the best running shoes." The only long-term defense is to build a brand so strong that people ask for you by name.