AI Agents: How CMOs Must Prepare for Future Buyers

Ready to meet your next customers?

They’re called AI agents, and they’re searching, deciding, and buying on behalf of your human customers. And if your brand isn’t visible, trustworthy, and machine-readable, you’re out of the running.

In this guide, we’ll break down what AI agents are, how they’re reshaping buyer journeys, and how to build an AI Search Optimisation strategy that gets your business in front of both human and AI decision-makers.

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What Are AI Agents?

AI agents are autonomous software tools that complete tasks without ongoing human input. Unlike traditional software, they don’t follow a strict set of instructions. Instead, they interpret objectives and figure out how to achieve them independently.

Here’s how they work, using the example of scheduling a meeting with a client:

1. Understand the Goal: Identify that the task is to set up a meeting within a specific timeframe.
2. Plan Steps: Define what needs doing, such as checking both calendars, finding available slots, and preparing a meeting invite.
3. Interact with Tools: Access the relevant tools, such as calendar apps, email, and the meeting platform.
4. Execute Actions: Send out the meeting invitation and confirm the booking.

AI agents differ from generative AI. Generative AI, such as ChatGPT, is “reactive“: it produces content such as text or images in response to a prompt. AI agents are “proactive.” They use generative AI to understand language and intent, then take it a step further by taking action, all without needing step-by-step instructions.

Agentic AI refers to any system capable of operating independently to achieve a goal. It’s the underlying capability, like autonomy, decision-making, and task execution. AI agents are the real-world tools built using those capabilities.

AI Agents Are Already Buying: What It Means for Your Business

We’ve been talking about AI agents for a while, but 2025 has delivered the milestone moments that made them mainstream, led by ChatGPT:

• ChatGPT launched Agent Mode in July 2025.
• ChatGPT also rolled out Instant Checkout in September 2025.

“ChatGPT Agent Mode has access to its own virtual computer, so it can do searches and a series of tasks joined together from a simple prompt,” says Charlie Marchant, CEO of Exposure Ninja.

Charlie Marchant has been testing Agent Mode, including:

• Buy a Bag of Coffee: “In under three minutes, it had searched the internet, compared different coffees, put a kilogram into a basket at the checkout, and prompted me to take over to enter my address and payment details because I didn’t have this information pre-loaded.”
• Book a Restaurant: “I asked it to book a restaurant for 7 pm with vegetarian options. After some clarifying questions, it opened its browser, searched via OpenTable, compared menus, checked PDFs for vegetarian starters, read TripAdvisor reviews, and selected a restaurant.”
• Book a Flight: “I prompted it to find flights between 6 am and midday. It excluded a 12:05 flight, because it didn’t fall within the exact range. A human would’ve said, “Close enough,” but the AI didn’t, so it’s not perfect, yet.”

Instant Checkout, currently only available in the U.S., is a feature that allows users to buy products directly within ChatGPT. Initially launched with Etsy, it’s expanding to Shopify, meaning users will soon be able to buy from most brands without ever leaving the chat.

“Instant Checkout could mark the beginning of a new eCommerce era,” says Tim Cameron-Kitchen, Founder of Exposure Ninja.

These developments have huge implications for how people buy and how your business sells.

Traditionally, a buyer journey could look like:

• A user searches on Google.
• Clicks through to your blog or product page.
• Builds trust through multiple touchpoints.
• Eventually buys, books, or requests a quote.

Generative AI platforms have already altered the buying journey. With platforms like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini, the journey now looks more like this:

• A user asks ChatGPT for product recommendations.
• It lists options with short summaries.
• The user clicks through to websites to compare and decide.
• A human still drives the final action of buying, booking, or requesting a quote.

Now, with agentic AI in the mix:

• The user gives a goal, such as “Find a local café that delivers coffee beans to my address.”
• The agent searches, compares, and verifies reviews.
• It adds items to a basket and presents a checkout.
• The user confirms payment, directly within ChatGPT.

As Charlie Marchant puts it, “We’re no longer designing websites just for humans anymore. In five to ten years, humans might only visit your website 20% of the time. The rest will be AI agents.”

This will be one of the major AI Search trends for 2026. If your website isn’t structured for AI discovery, you’re out of the running before the buyer even sees their options.

This shift demands more than traditional SEO. Your product data, reviews, and brand signals must be consistent, trusted, and machine-readable across the web. Optimising for human visitors and traditional search engines is no longer enough; you need to optimise for AI Search.

How to Be the Brand AI Agents Choose

1. Great Website Structure and CRO

AI agents are ruthless shoppers. If your site is slow, confusing, or full of conversion blockers, they’ll leave instantly and move to the next best result.

As Charlie Marchant explains, “When I did my coffee purchase, it went onto one website, and couldn’t figure out how to get around. It hit error pages, so it just left and went to the next one.”

These agents have even less patience than people. They expect a clean, logical website structure they can interpret and act upon. Every page element needs to be easy to read, navigate, and convert programmatically.

“CRO is going to be even more important than it was before,” says Charlie Marchant. That means:

• A simple, linear checkout process with no checkout blockers, such as account creation.
• Clear product descriptions written in plain text with language that reflects the prompts used.
• Drop-downs and selectors that are consistent and easy for machines to interpret.
• Reviews and pricing data visible in text, not hidden in images or scripts.

A well-structured, fast-loading site that’s clean in code and frictionless in function isn’t just good UX anymore. It’s how you get chosen by both people and the agents buying on their behalf.

2. Nail Technical Foundations

Technical SEO has always mattered, but for AI agents, it’s non-negotiable.

AI agents are ruthlessly efficient. If your site is slow, has broken links, or lacks proper schema markup, you’re not just ranking lower; you might be excluded from the decision-making process entirely.

“Technical SEO, especially schema markup, is essential,” says Charlie Marchant. “Humans don’t read schema, we never have, but bots do. And now AI bots are navigating around the internet and making decisions on our behalf. So if you’ve not taken care of your technical SEO, now is a great time to start.”

AI agents rely on structured, accessible, and accurate information. That means your backend must be as polished as your frontend. A visually beautiful site means nothing if the agent can’t interpret what it’s seeing or gets blocked by slow speeds or broken links.

Here are the essentials to prioritise:

• Page load speed under two seconds. AI agents, like Google, prioritise fast-loading resources.
• Schema markup for products, services, reviews, FAQs, articles, locations, and organisation details. This is how AI agents “understand” what your site offers.
• Clean crawl paths with logical internal linking. AI agents follow links to understand relationships between your pages.
• XML sitemaps that accurately reflect your site structure.
• No crawl blockers, such as robots.txt, that may unintentionally exclude important content.

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3. Rank Well in Traditional Search

AI agents, such as ChatGPT’s Agent Mode, use a built-in virtual browser to “open the web” just like a human would. When you give it a task, such as “book a vegetarian-friendly Indian restaurant in Brighton,” it literally launches a browser, types in queries, scans menus, reads reviews, and adds items to carts or makes bookings.

This matters because if your site isn’t ranking at the top of traditional search engines like Google or Bing, AI agents may never encounter it during a browsing session. That will directly translate to lost conversions and revenue.

To be considered by AI agents, you still need solid Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). That includes nailing your on-page, off-page, and technical SEO strategy:

On-Page SEO

• Structured content with target keywords and semantic variations.
• Clear, relevant meta titles and meta descriptions.
• Internal links to show your content’s hierarchy.

Off-Page SEO

• High-authority backlinks to build trust and domain credibility.
• Consistent brand mentions across relevant sites.
• Optimise for local SEO by managing your Google Business Profile and collecting quality local reviews.

Sell More to Human and AI Buyers

The rise of AI agents doesn’t mean human buyers are disappearing, but it does mean you need to optimise for both.

Here’s what that looks like:

• Website Structure and CRO: Clean, intuitive navigation, clear calls to action (CTAs), and frictionless checkout processes that both humans and agents can navigate with ease.
• Technical SEO: Ensure your site is fast, secure, and marked up with structured data to keep human users and AI agents engaged.
• Ranking Well: Visibility in Google and Bing remains the first step. If your site doesn’t appear in search, human buyers or AI agents won’t find you.

At Exposure Ninja, we’re already helping businesses future-proof their marketing with our AI Search Strategy designed to boost visibility and conversions from both human and machine buyers. Request a website and marketing review to discover how ready your site is for the AI-powered buyer journey.

FAQs

What are people using AI agents for?

People are using AI agents to complete tasks such as booking flights, reserving restaurants, and buying products, all with minimal input. These agents can browse the web, compare options, and make decisions based on a user’s goals.

Is ChatGPT an AI agent?

ChatGPT is a generative AI that responds to prompts but doesn’t take action. However, it features AI Mode, an agentic AI capability that enables it to perform tasks. In AI Mode, it can search, interact with websites, and complete goals on a user’s behalf.

Can AI agents make purchases?

Yes, AI agents can make purchases using features like ChatGPT’s Agent Mode and Instant Checkout. These tools allow the agent to browse products, compare options, and complete transactions directly.