The New Frontier: The Agentic Commerce Optimization Podcast

Azoma CEO and co-founder Max Sinclair joins Stephen Honight and Chris Grimsey on The Agent Economy to break the news of Azoma's recent investment from dunnhumby ventures and what it could mean for connecting AI recommendations to real-world sales.The discussion explores how shopping assistants like Amazon Rufus, Walmart Sparky, ChatGPT and Gemini are changing product discovery, why AI visibility metrics can be misleading, and how brands can respond using the five Cs of agentic commerce: completeness, context, citations, correctness and customer acquisition.Plus, Max shares how Azoma builds in two-week cycles, how his team uses AI day to day, and why agent-to-agent commerce may already be here with AI personal assistants like Meta Muse and Instinct. Find out more about Azoma.

In this episode, Max is joined by Aisha Khan, Head of Dentsu Commerce for North America and the first agency partner to appear on the podcast. Aisha brings deep enterprise commerce experience from WPP, Publicis, and PMG, where she led commerce strategy and retail media for brands including Unilever, Lego, Mars, and Nestlé.They unpack one of the wildest news weeks in agentic commerce yet: the launch of Meta Muse, Instacart's new shopping agent Clementine, and the landmark Amazon Ads x OpenAI partnership that puts Amazon DSP ads inside ChatGPT. From there, the conversation turns to the big question: do brands still need agencies when AI agents can execute campaigns? Aisha makes the case for agencies evolving from a labor layer into an intelligence and orchestration layer, and explains why efficiency gains from AI are actually creating more complexity, not less.Also in this episode:Why the battle among the big platforms is really about owning your personal "super assistant"The anthropological side of shopping, and why brands must now market to humans and machines at the same timeHow the digital shelf is shrinking from ten results to three or four, and soon to oneWhy "share of voice" metrics break down when every LLM recommendation is hyper-personalisedThe biggest shift CMOs aren't preparing for: treating LLM optimisation as a generalist bucket instead of a matrixed disciplineWhy Dentsu has partnered with ⁠⁠Azoma⁠⁠ as its AEO/GEO and agentic commerce provider.What will separate winners from losers a year from now: trust, risk appetite, and first mover advantageThe episode closes with why Dentsu chose Azoma as its partner for GEO, with Aisha calling it a best-in-class capability not just for retail but beyond, and what the two teams plan to build together for Dentsu's clients.

Levi Levenfiche is co-founder of PerfectTed, the fastest–growing energy drink brand in the UK and the largest matcha brand in Europe. The company started on his Kitchen table with his wife and brother. PerfectTed is one of Dragons' Den's biggest stories (the UK's version of Shark Tank). Their energetic pitch (⁠youtube video⁠) which they opened by stating their "mission to spread positive energy", ended with all five Dragos offering to invest, from who they chose a £50k investment from Stephen Bartlett. He has since followed this up with a second of investment of £1m. PerfectTed have fully capitalized on their 15 minutes of TV fame, growing monthly sales from £7k pre-Dragons Den to +£1m a month today in just two and a half years. Levi joins Max to discuss their strategies of focusing on brand and community, following Stephen Bartlett's advice of "building a cult", and how they became a repeat purchase that is part of their customer's daily rituals. Levi and Max also discuss' PerfectTed's three-pronged sales channel approach of Retail, ecommerce, and Highstreet coffee shop franchise partnerships. Perfect Ted is now stocked in all major retailers, including Tesco, Asda, and Sainsburys; selling on Amazon and Shopify; as well as partnering with major Highstreet chains such as Joe and the Juice and Blacksheep. Finally, Levi turns the tables and ask's Max's advice on how he would optimize PerfectTed on Amazon, particularly for Amazon's new search Algorithm COSMO.This is a rebroadcast of an episode that originally aired in 2024.

Welcome to the first episode of Agentic Commerce Architects. Max Sinclair sits down with Emma Lifer, Marketplace SEO and Merchandising Manager at Grüns, one of the fastest growing supplement brands on Amazon, to unpack how a real practitioner is winning visibility across Alexa for Shopping, Walmart Sparky, ChatGPT, Gemini and beyond.Emma leads SEO, AEO, affiliates and marketplace sales at Gruns, and previously spent three years leading SEO at Front Row Group. In this conversation she shares exactly how she manages agentic commerce day to day, including why she treats AI shopping as another aisle, how she balances writing for humans and agents, and why she makes content changes weekly without fear of tanking her rankings.In this episode:Why the old wives' tale that changing your Amazon content destroys your rank is deadHow AI agents treat the Buy Box, stock status and pricing differently to human shoppersWhether agentic checkout will quietly erode Subscribe and Save economicsCompliance risk for supplement brands when Alexa hallucinates health claims, and how to correct it through backend attributes, reviews and Q&AsCounterfeits and copycats in an agentic worldHow Emma drives cross-functional alignment across PR, PPC, legal and brand without a formal task forceThe three practical first steps any brand can take on agentic commerce optimisation, starting with backend attributesDo AI agents help challenger brands differentiate, or flatten everything into cheapest and best rated?Whether you manage five SKUs or five thousand, this is a tactical, in-the-weeds look at what actually works right now.Hosted by Max Sinclair, Co-founder and CEO of Azoma, the Agentic Commerce Optimisation platform. Learn more at azoma.ai.

Max Sinclair, ex-Amazonian and CEO of Azoma, builds AI tools for commerce. Lauren Livak leads the Digital Shelf Institute and researches digital-shelf strategy. They unpack the 5 Cs: completeness of product data, adding shopper-focused context, earning trusted citations, fixing AI inaccuracies, and tying everything to customer acquisition. Short, practical takes on where AI sources info and what brands should prioritize next.

AI isn’t coming for commerce—it’s already deciding what gets discovered, recommended, and purchased.In this special episode created in partnership with WIAB—Women in Amazon Business, Cristina and Jacqui sit down with Max Sinclair, founder and CEO of Azoma, to unpack the AI visibility revolution and what it means for brands, retailers, founders, and women shaping the future of commerce.Max spent six years at Amazon, including helping establish its search operations in Singapore. Now, he’s helping brands understand a very different kind of discovery landscape—one where shoppers may no longer scroll through pages of products because AI assistants are narrowing the options for them.Think fewer search results. More personalized recommendations. And eventually? An AI agent choosing the product before the shopper ever sees the alternatives.Convenient? Absolutely.A little terrifying for brands still relying on yesterday’s SEO playbook? Also yes.Max introduces Azoma’s Five C’s of agentic commerce optimization—completeness, context, citations, correctness, and customer acquisition—and explains why brands need to start thinking beyond keywords and product-page rankings.The conversation also gets into the “SHe” in SHeCOMMERCE: why women cannot afford to sit politely on the sidelines while AI systems are being built, trained, and deployed.Women influence enormous portions of household and consumer spending. They understand the customers, categories, and real-life decisions these systems will shape. Their voices, experiences, and leadership need to be embedded in the technology—not added as an afterthought.Inside the episode:• Why traditional search strategies are no longer enough• How AI shopping agents are changing product discovery• What brands need to know about AI visibility and accuracy• Why curiosity—not technical expertise—is the first step into AI• Max’s framework for finding your founder edge and spotting the next inflection point• Why more women need to test, challenge, build, and lead in this spaceThe message? You don’t need to become an AI engineer overnight.But you do need to lean in.Because when algorithms influence what the world buys, representation isn’t a nice-to-have—it shapes who gets discovered, which products get recommended, and whose needs become the default.🎧 Press play and join the AI visibility revolution.Bold Brands. Fierce Women. One Sisterhood.And a few very evolved men helping us build it.SHeCOMMERCE: Website: https://shecommercepodcast.com/LinkedIN:  https://www.linkedin.com/company/shecommercepodcast/YouTube: www.youtube.com/@SHeCOMMERCEPodcast

Max Sinclair, founder and CEO of Azoma and ex-Amazonian who studies AI for ecommerce, outlines how AI shopping agents are reshaping product discovery. He highlights the shrinking digital shelf, the shift from keywords to LLM world knowledge, the query fanout and citation behavior of agents, and big-platform moves like Amazon Rufus, Google Gemini and Walmart Sparky. He also previews Azoma’s 5C Generative Engine Optimization framework.

Artiom Enkov, VP of Insights at Gener8 who studies consumer behavior with large metered panels, discusses surprising Rufus users skewing older. He breaks down how US vs UK usage differs, why Rufus helps shoppers in the messy middle, and the rise of power users. The talk also touches on sponsored prompts, trust in AI recommendations, and future agentic purchasing features.

Ian Simpson, SVP of Innovation at Sensor Tower and data intelligence leader, unpacks research tracking 60,000 U.S. shoppers over 18 months. He discusses Rufus adoption on Amazon, why high-intent shoppers use AI to find products, differences between web and app behavior, seasonal shifts like Black Friday and Spring Sale, and what rising AI-driven discovery means for brands.

Martin Schwartzman, Partner and Global AI Lead at OC&C who advises Fortune 500s on AI and business-model shifts, walks through agentic commerce and its plumbing. He describes AI personal agents that manage intent, size, availability, price, and quality. The talk covers how personalization shifts to consumer agents, which brands win, marketplace impacts, publisher data risks, and how consulting and legal work must adapt.