Robots Optimize Differently

This week on the retailgentic podcast, we have an experiment for you. NRF concluded Tuesday Jan 13th and Scot's good friend and podcast partner over at the Jason and Scot show, Jason Goldberg (Chief Digital Commerce Officer at Publicis) was invited to ‘tie the bow’ on the conference in the last keynote: Commerce Disrupted: Rise of the AI Native Consumer.

This episode is the audio from that presentation on 1/13/26. Jason covers:

• Agentic commerce, defined clearly: not “AI efficiencies,” but new consumer behaviors (and the full “iceberg” of influence, not just robot-takes-card transactions).
• Is it hype or historic? Jason frames the debate (skeptics vs believers) and uses live audience polling to set the stakes.
• A disruption of discovery: the decline of “saw in store,” then “search,” then “social”, and now the robot becomes the front door.
• The cautionary tale (Tudor Ice): why incumbents often miss the next business model, even when they dominated the last one.
• Retail growth is concentrated: a few giants capture a huge share of growth, while challengers (Shein/Temu/TikTok Shop) rewrite the playbook.
• AI shopping ramps fast: from research → to product tiles → to direct purchase inside AI experiences, plus retailer catalogs moving upstream.
• 0-click commerce: the next leap isn’t fewer clicks, it’s no clicks (automation, replenishment, “never let me run out”).
• Onsite vs offsite agents: retailers’ on-site assistants (ex: Amazon) vs consumers using neutral offsite agents that choose the retailer for them.
• Winning the robots: why optimization shifts toward what models care about (criteria, sources, “GEO/AEO/ACO”), and why this changes constantly.
• Change management wins: Doug McMillon’s “How did you use AI to prepare?” as a culture lever—and why org adoption matters as much as tech.

If AI changes the way people discover, it changes everything downstream. Brands, retailers, and platforms all have to learn to win the robot’s shelf.

Notable timestamps 

• 00:00 — The real disruption: new consumer behavior, not efficiency gains
• 01:43 — Scott sets up the “special episode” + NRF context
• 03:17 — The experiment: “put you in the audience” (keynote replay)
• 06:29 — The big questions: how big is agentic commerce + who wins?
• 08:07 — Skeptics vs believers: “hallucination” vs “overhyped” vs transformational
• 11:05 — Defining agentic commerce + the “influence vs transaction” iceberg
• 15:07 — Tudor Ice story: disruption, incumbents, and missing the next model
• 19:14 — $5.3T retail + who captured the growth (concentration)
• 22:16 — “Disruption of discovery”: saw-in-store → search → social
• 25:04 — Viral demand shock example (whipped coffee)
• 26:53 — Sunscreen example + TikTok → then “ask the robot”
• 29:08 — “How fast this changed” (recent launches + ecosystem momentum)
• 30:19 — From “order” to “never let me run out” (automation framing)
• 31:11 — Clicks: 22 → 4 → “one-click” → 0-click
• 32:40 — Proof points: agent assistants and rising adoption
• 33:49 — Offsite agents: buying without choosing a retailer first
• 34:03 — In-store: pointing ChatGPT at the shelf (real-world agent use)
• 36:29 — Scale math: small % of prompts can still be massive volume
• 38:34 — Robots optimize differently + why brands need new processes/tools
• 39:36 — GEO/AEO vs the bigger strategic layer (Agentic Commerce Optimization)
• 40:33 — Doug McMillon’s culture lever: “How did you use AI to prepare?”
• 42:12 — Final message: change management to avoid being the “ice harvesters”

👉 Connect with Jason: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasongoldberg/
👉 Connect with Scot: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thescotwingo/
👉 See the slides: https://open.substack.com/pub/scotwingorefibuy/p/jason-goldbergs-full-nrf-keynote

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