Beyond the Click: Thriving in the Era of Agentic Commerce
Anonymous
January 29, 2026
For years, marketing was a battle for the human eye. We obsessed over UI/UX, agonized over "omnichannel" touchpoints, and treated the "click" as the ultimate validation of success.
But as we settle into 2026, the landscape has fractured. We are no longer just selling to people; we are selling to the AI Agents that represent them. Welcome to the era of Agentic Commerce, where the primary consumer isn't a person browsing a site, but a machine making a decision.
The Great Decoupling: From Browsing to Executing
Traditional e-commerce was designed for the "fickle human," someone who compares, hesitates, and gets distracted by a shiny banner ad. Agentic commerce is built for the "decisive machine."
Consider a typical 2026 transaction: A user tells their AI, "Get me a waterproof jacket for Hanoi by Thursday, under $100." In the time it takes you to blink, that agent has:
Parsed thousands of SKUs across the web.
Verified real-time stock levels.
Negotiated a loyalty discount via a merchant’s API.
Finalized the purchase.
The human never saw a landing page. They never saw an ad. If your brand’s data isn't "machine readable," your brand simply doesn't exist to that buyer.
The Southeast Asia Leapfrog: A New Global Blueprint
While Western markets often struggle with legacy digital infrastructure, Southeast Asia is "leapfrogging" the old guard. Much like the region skipped desktops for mobile, ASEAN is now skipping basic e-commerce for Agentic AI.
The numbers tell the story:
Vietnam: Leads the charge with a staggering 93% AI adoption rate among businesses.
Malaysia & Thailand: Rapidly integrating AI into SME logistics and cross-border trade.
By utilizing AI-driven translation and automated supply chains, local players are no longer just "local" they are competing at a global scale without the need for massive marketing departments.
The New North Star: "Share of Model" (SoM)
The CMO’s dashboard is undergoing a radical redesign. "Share of Voice" is a vanity metric in a world where agents do the listening. The new KPI is Share of Model (SoM).
SoM measures how frequently AI "reasoning engines" recommend or select your brand over a competitor. To win the SoM game, leaders must pivot on three fronts:
Semantic Structuring: Your product data can’t just be a pretty photo. It must be organized in a high-dimensional "vector space" that AI agents can parse for context and quality.
Latency is Loss: In agent-to-agent negotiation, speed is the ultimate currency. If your API takes two seconds to respond while a competitor’s takes 200ms, you’ve already lost the sale.
Algorithmic Creativity: Instead of one "hero" campaign, brands now use AI to generate thousands of micro-variations. These aren't for humans to see they are designed to appeal to the specific parameters identified by the buyer’s agent.
Moving Toward AgentOps
The transition is already yielding results. Early adopters in the region have seen lead costs drop by 40% while lead quality has doubled. The "human" element hasn't vanished; it has shifted. We are moving toward an Agent-to-Agent (A2A) economy.
To survive, leadership must look beyond basic chatbots and invest in AgentOps the operational framework required to manage a fleet of AI agents that represent, defend, and sell your brand 24/7. SOMIN offers brands an intelligence layer to compete for Share of Model in an agent-driven economy. By structuring media signals, market behavior, and performance data through SODA and SOMONITOR, It provides content types, themes, personas, and campaign intents, along with organic and paid insights into how brands are interpreted by AI systems.
This leads to quicker decision-making and optimized campaigns for machine selection. As Agentic Commerce grows in Southeast Asia, SOMIN helps brands transition from marketing execution to AgentOps, ensuring they are consistently chosen in AI-mediated transactions.
The window for experimentation is closing. In 2026, you don't just want to be seen. You want to be selected.
