Amazon is blocking nearly every AI shopping agent, starting with Perplexity. Rick Watson and Jessica Lesesky go through Goldman Sachs' 64-page report on agentic commerce, which opens on Amazon's blocking and includes a section on agent liability that is labeled TBD.

Rick reads the blocking as a negotiating position, the same move Amazon made with Buy With Prime and Shopify. Jess thinks Amazon is right to keep agents out and points to Meta's record on account security as a reason to be careful about handing any agent your cards. Shopify and Walmart are going the other direction, though nobody is reporting what Walmart actually sells inside ChatGPT.

They also cover who is on the hook when an agent buys something it shouldn't have, and what happens to retail media, a $170B business last year, when the shopper reading the page is a bot that never sees an ad.

The back half is about Oreos. Mondelez found its cookies came up in about 10% of AI cookie recommendations, brought in AEO and GEO firms, and now shows up around 70% of the time according to the Goldman research. Rick and Jess also disagree on whether you separate the cookie before eating it. For brands that aren't showing up in agent results, part of the fix is technical work on their own sites, and some are blocking agents they don't know about.

This episode is sponsored by Avalara.