For the last few years, AI lived on the edges of commerce.

Writing copy.
Summarizing data.
Speeding up tasks.

That phase is ending.

What’s changing now is where commerce actually happens.

AI is moving from being a support layer inside your business to becoming a direct interface between customers and purchases. Not someday. Not “in a few years”. Right now.

Shopify and Google’s latest announcements aren’t experiments. They’re laying infrastructure, protocols, and standards.

And once infrastructure is in place, behavior follows fast.

This is one of those moments where nothing looks broken…until everything shifts at once. The brands that treat 2026 like “business as usual” will be reacting. The ones paying attention now will be designing for what commerce is turning into.

Let’s get into it.

Topics we'll cover today:
💠 AI Is About to Become a Sales Channel
💠 3 Things Your Brand Should Focus On in 2026
💠 Latest news in the DTC space

In case you didn’t hear the news, Shopify and Google partnered up to change the game in the agentic commerce race.

This is not just another update.

This is a BIG deal.

Think of this like it’s 1998 and I’m telling you:

“You’ll soon have a website, and people will buy through it”.

Shopify is now preparing merchants to sell through AI agents the same way they once prepared them to sell through Facebook, Instagram, or Google Shopping.

But this time, there’s no:

Traffic → Website → Checkout funnel.

AI agents can now:

All without sending the buyer to a traditional storefront.

Let’s break down the two updates that make this possible.

Agentic Storefronts are not prettier websites.

They’re storefronts designed to be read, interpreted, and acted on by AI agents, not humans.

That means:

In other words, Shopify is pushing merchants to turn their stores into machine-readable commerce systems.

This is subtle, but important.

An AI agent doesn’t “browse” a PDP.

It evaluates options.

It needs to quickly answer:

Agentic Storefronts are Shopify’s way of making sure your store can answer those questions without a human in the loop.

If your store data is messy, incomplete, or ambiguous, the agent doesn’t negotiate.

It just moves on.

This is the layer that connects everything.

The Universal Commerce Protocol creates a standardized way for AI platforms (Google, Gemini, and future assistants) to transact directly with Shopify merchants.

No custom integrations.
No one-off APIs.
No rebuilding checkout logic for every platform.

Think of UCP as the “HTTP of commerce for AI".

It defines:

Once a merchant supports the protocol, any compatible AI agent can sell on their behalf.

This is the part most brands are missing.

You won’t “launch” an AI sales channel.
You’ll wake up one day already selling through one.

Because if your store runs on Shopify (and your data, offers, and rules are structured correctly) AI agents will increasingly become the interface between demand and purchase.

Just like marketplaces did.
Just like paid social did.
Just like mobile did.

The brands that win here won’t be the ones asking:

“How do we use AI for marketing?”

They’ll be asking:

This isn’t about replacing your site.

It’s about accepting that your site is no longer the only storefront that matters.

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The other day, a brand asked me which top 3 things they should do next to scale. 

For context, they are a 7-figure brand with a small team. So they need to pick their battles wisely to make the most out of their resources. 

Here's what I said:

Every business has its own seasonality.

However, nothing should keep you from identifying opportunities to create unique commercial actions, aside from the well-known ones.

It could be things like:

👉 A sale
👉 Product releases
👉 Brand anniversary
👉 Strategic partnerships
👉 Early access to something
👉 Limited-time product editions

If you haven't done this, I'd suggest you go back to your 2026 plan and think of these sales peaks of your own.

Plan strategically and communicate clearly to make the most out of it.

It's 2026, so I think we'll know about the importance of content creation.

However, many brands have not adapted.

I'll say it once again:
👉 Brands need to create content regularly, period.
👉 A quarterly photoshoot is not gonna cut it anymore.
👉 Creative diversity is key to scaling both organic and paid efforts.

Instead:
👉 Get involved in your community.
👉 Aligning your mission with your actions.
👉 Go above and beyond for your customers. 

It's the difference between being seen as "just another brand" and "a valuable member of my community".

If you're looking for a growth partner that helps you make 2026 your best year yet, let's chat.

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Season 6 is around the corner! I’m recording great episodes with AMAZING people.

In the meantime, I wanted to share an episode I really enjoyed in 2025, and I think many of you will too.

It’s the episode with Born Primitive’s founder, Bear Handlon. He bootstrapped the brand to over $100M in annual sales, building an incredible community around it and perfectly illustrating what I often talk about: going beyond the storefront and putting your mission and vision into practice.

Check it out 👇 

🎧 Tune in

If you found this interesting, please leave us a review. It’d mean the world to me.

📰 7 Digital Marketing Trends to Watch for in 2026 [read more]
📰 How Brands Are Planning Ahead [read more]
📰 37% of consumers start searches with AI [read more]

Brian Roisentul is the founder & CEO of BSR Digital, a growth marketing agency he started in 2013 to help e-commerce brands unlock hidden revenue by identifying misalignments between their marketing and customer behavior. He is also the host of The DTC Insider podcast, where he interviews thought leaders, founders, and directors in the e-commerce space.

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