How will agentic commerce shape Black Friday 2026?

Agentic commerce took off in a big way in 2026 – and as this year's golden quarter begins, Google and Meta have both launched new tools with capabilities that help consumers navigate retailers, promotions and purchase journeys. 

The implications for CX are undeniable. AI-first customer journeys and third party purchasing platforms aren't just changing how customers discover and interact with brands – they're changing the customer relationship, loyalty and operations, as  well as how brands split marketing resources between paid and earned media. The shift also places a heightened focus on customer reviews. 

Some retailers are choosing to block third-party AI agents from their sites and apps, but that can only hold back the flood waters for so long.

As these trends converge, this article covers: 

• The agentic capabilities consumers have at their fingertips this golden quarter.
• The sites blocking third-party AI agents.
• Why consumer trust is needed for wider spread adoption of agentic commerce.
• How agent to agent interactions are taking off in B2C and B2B customer service.

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How popular is agentic commerce? 

According to Adobe, traffic from consumer AI assistants to retail websites in the US will increase 130 percent during the upcoming golden quarter. 

Specifically, Adobe says AI-referred traffic is projected to rise 159 percent year over year on Thanksgiving, 95 percent on Black Friday and 88 percent on Cyber Monday. For context, paid search traffic is expected to increase four percent, while traffic from social media is forecast to grow 17 percent.

These figures build on an already strong trend in AI-first customer journeys. In the first quarter of 2025, retail sites in the US saw a 393 percent increase in traffic from AI sources, as more consumers use AI to initiate their shopping journeys.

In 2024, Adobe reported a 1,300 percent spike in traffic from AI sources. On Cyber Monday that year traffic from generative AI was 1,950 percent higher than in 2023. 

McKinsey's 2026 Agentic Commerce Consumer Survey found that more than 50 percent of consumers globally use AI for shopping but adoption varies across markets. China leads the way at 80  percent adoption and at the other end of the scale, Japan's adoption rate stands at 37 percent.

CX Network's annual research into the state of CX in 2026 found AI-first customer journeys to be the third most influential CX trend and third most influential consumer behaviour shaping the work of CX practitioners.  

Which AI agents are consumers using to shop? 

Although ChatGPT rolled back its Instant Checkout capabilities, AI assistants are still being used by consumers to find and compare products, retailers and brands. Since September, however, two new tools have launched with dedicated shopping features. 

In September Meta launched Muse, a personal AI agent that can execute a range of tasks from calendar and email management to image generation and business growth inspiration. It can also shop. 

Muse can find "the best" deal, track prices, handle returns and refunds and even buy and sell items on marketplace. Because it works across multiple devices and can access the apps on these devices, it can integrate with any digital task or journey.

October Google went a step further when it unveiled Universal Cart. This isn't a device-based tool; it works across Google Search and the Gemini app. But it helps shoppers to organize items they want to buy from multiple retailers, stay on top of promotions and enjoy "effortless checkout" powered by the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP).

Do customers trust AI to shop for them? 

McKinsey's research found that although agentic commerce is taking off, it isn't and end-to-end experience for everybody. Consumers heavily delegate discovery, comparison, and learning to AI tools, but trust drops significantly closer to actual checkout/autonomous ordering. This is part of why Adobe has recorded such strong referral traffic to retail websites from AI assistants and AI search. 

Putting figures on that drop off, YouGov's 2026 Black Friday and Cyber Monday report found only 23 percent of British adults intend to make purchases on Black Friday, but among that cohort, the trust divide is clearly evident. 

As many as 40 percent of shoppers would be comfortable using AI to find the best price. But only seven percent would let it add items to their basket, and a mere five percent would let it complete a purchase, even after approving it.

According to research conducted by Visa, this is because consumers are not yet psychologically or institutionally ready to let an agent act and spend on their behalf.

Michael Nevski, who most recently held the role of director of global insights for Visa's Business and Economic Insights team, says: "Consumers already grasp the appeal, efficiency, personalization, less effort, potential savings. What they are waiting for is not better technology. They are waiting for a trustworthy system around the technology."

You can watch Nevski discuss the research in detail during Mastering CX: AI Agents 2026, below.

Writing for CX Network, CRM and CX specialist Behnam Behzadyfar says the trust issue is even more nuanced: consumers may be embracing personal AI assistants, but they are increasingly cautious about engaging with corporate-owned AI tools in CX and service. 

"The asymmetry in trust stems from divergent incentives… In an environment where buyers navigate commerce armed with their own autonomous agents, organizations can no longer hide behind opaque workflows, black-box algorithms, or manipulative deflection loops. Customers want control of their experiences, data and outcomes."

In service, agent-to-agent interactions are happening more often

That's the CX story. Things are developing differently in customer service. 

Almost a decade after it was first hypothesized, agent-to-agent (A2A) or also referred to as machine-to-machine (M2M) interactions are taking off across B2B and B2C service suites. 

NiCE – which is working with Meta and on the Personal Agent Protocol – asked 118 of its customers from 70 organizations what they are seeing with A2A interactions. 
Although low on stats, anecdotal input included: 

• A UK energy utility provider which is seeing almost 35 percent of its interactions now handled end to end by AI.
• A global transportation company reported an uptick in customer-side personal AI agents interacting directly with its front-line virtual agents to negotiate appointments, clarify account details or initiate service requests without a human present on either side.
• A non-clinical performance manager at a UK urgent and integrated care provider said: "What we're seeing is a shift from AI assistants supporting people to AI agents collaborating with other AI agents to complete end-to-end tasks. That creates significant opportunities around speed, scale and automation." 

But some websites – including Amazon and eBay – have blocked consumer AI agents 

Not everybody is on board. In late 2025 eBay updated its underlying code with a Robot and Agent Policy for the main domain, which includes new guidelines for how web scrapers, LLMs, and AI agents use the site. It stated: "Automated scraping, buy-for-me agents, LLM-driven bots, or any end-to-end flow that attempts to place orders without human review is strictly prohibited." 

In February it went a step further, updating its user agreement to prohibit the use of third-party chatbots and AI agents from shopping on its platform on behalf of human customers. This policy applies to buy-for-me agents, LLM-driven bots, or any other tool that attempts to place orders without human review. 

In a statement published at the time, eBay said: "We periodically update our User Agreement to ensure it reflects our published policies for how automated systems may interact with eBay. Unauthorized agentic AI tools and bots are not permitted to access or take actions on our platform.

Amazon has made similar moves. In 2025, it sent a cease and desist letter to Perplexity to stop the AI agent feature in its Comet browser from shopping on Amazon. 
The ecommerce giant – has also added specific restrictions to its site against both OpenAI and Google. 

Amazon says it is because of the "reliability of AI agents" to provide accurate information for pricing, delivery, and inventory. But it isn't shying away from agentic commerce altogether. Within its own Amazon Shopping app and website ecosystem, Amazon offers Rufus and Alexa+ and in May 2026 launched Alexa for Shopping, which combines the capabilities of these two tools. To help shoppers beyond the Amazon ecosystem it also offers the Buy-for-Me feature that allows app users to source products Amazon doesn't sell. 

AI will find the deals, shoppers will close them. For now.

AI may be finding more deals this year, but shoppers will still be closing them – and to do that they will have to end their journey within their chosen retailer's digital ecosystem. 
Capturing that traffic may require retailers to be more competitive than in previous years – at this point, those decisions have already been made. 

However, the coming months give retailers a chance to observe how traffic refers to their sites and apps, how the journey from AI search to purchase plays out and decide what the resulting patterns will mean for loyalty, conversational CX, relationship management, engagement and personalization. 

Quick links 

6 Essential tools to drive visibility in AI search

6 Global banks collaborate on "principles for trusted agentic commerce"

American Express and Visa put their money on agentic commerce