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Ads in ChatGPT? AI Agents Buying for You? Three Retail Leaders Debate Agentic Commerce
Episode 24715th April 2026 • The Watson Weekly: eCommerce Strategy & News • Watson Weekly
00:00:00 01:14:12

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The Agentic Debate Series Lunch @ Shoptalk Las Vegas 2026, Presented by Logicbroker. Recorded live in Las Vegas on March 24, 2026. Rick Watson hosts an agentic commerce debate with three retail practitioners who aren't selling anything — just calling it like they see it.

Chris Silver (CTO, JustFoodforDogs), Gina Lombardo (VP of Digital, Retrofête), and Dave Finnegan (Managing Director, BlackFinn Partners) go head-to-head on three questions the entire industry is dancing around:

Will ads ever work inside AI agents — or does injecting ads into a trusted conversation destroy the whole model? Is agentic commerce actually going to drive incremental revenue, or is it a hype cycle with a nice deck? And the big one: are websites doomed when an AI agent can just buy for you?

The answers are more nuanced — and more honest — than what you're hearing from the main stage. Topics include cost-per-action ad models, why "retail therapy" isn't going away, how luxury brands could use agents to increase AOV, the consumer trust crisis around hallucinations, and why your product data strategy matters more than your payments infrastructure right now.

If you're a merchant trying to figure out what to actually do about agentic commerce in 2026, this is the conversation.

The Agentic Debate Series Lunch @ Shoptalk Las Vegas 2026, Presented by Logicbroker, was sponsored by Logicbroker, Avalara, SCAYLE, and Fortier.

Timestamps

0:00 - Introduction

01:45 - Rick Watson setting the scene/background

05:10 - Panel members welcomed

07:35 - Will ads ever work in a trusted medium?

24:43 - Sponsor message from Logicbroker CEO Omar Qari

24:13 - Agentic commerce: a nothingburger or incremental?

49:38 - Sponsor message from SCAYLE Commerce Engine, Jake Wright

52:07 - Are websites doomed?

#watsonliveatshoptalk #agenticcommerce #nothingburger #advertising #website

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