December 18, 2025
While everyone obsessively discusses how Artificial Intelligence (AI) works, few ask what it consumes. And the urgent question for 2026 is how to operationalize it. For the last few years, the marketing mandate was simple: Win the search algorithm. But we are watching the physics of commerce shift. We are moving from an era of search (finding a list of links or being suggested with sponsored links) to an era of selection (receiving a definitive answer through AI summaries, agents and bots). In this new reality, AI shopping agents act as the gatekeepers.
To survive this shift, brands must move beyond ‘visibility’ and focus on the ultimate goal: getting chosen. But you cannot be chosen if you are invisible. And you cannot be chosen if you are not trusted. With commerce centering itself around AI discovery and shopping, we reinstated our brand strategy at Bazaarvoice. We realized that our core truth, the authentic consumer voice, is the data layer that powers this entire journey.
It is how you power up discovery and trust to ensure you get chosen.
Be discovered, trusted and chosen – by AI shopping agents and consumers
While building out the new Bazaarvoice messaging, we were reminded that the foundation upon which we built our business 20 years ago is exactly what consumers (and AI shopping agents) crave even today: Authenticity and trust. Because behind every data point, every review, and every photo, is a human experience. A problem solved. A joy shared.
Bazaarvoice is, ‘the world’s most trusted network of authentic consumer voices’. We source, verify, and amplify authentic ratings, reviews, photos, and videos at scale, helping 13,000+ of the world’s leading brand and retail sites reach shoppers, build trust, and drive conversions.
Put simply, we help brands and products be discovered, trusted, and chosen by shoppers and AI.
And here is how AI, consumer narrative and the Bazaarvoice Triple-A framework connect to that outcome:
1. Powering discovery (accessible)
The reality: Invisibility is now a structural problem. If AI shopping agents cannot parse your product data, you literally do not exist in the recommendation engine.
The fix: It is not enough to just ‘have’ content. That content must be accessible, structured, machine-readable, and syndicated. Bazaarvoice provides the product data optimization in e-commerce pipes that ensure your brand is legible to the algorithms. By managing syndicated reviews effectively, we ensure your content exists everywhere your shopper does, making the shortlist every time.
2. Powering trust (authentic)
The reality: AI models and humans are programmed to minimize risk. They hesitate when fed unverified noise or scam-prone data.
The fix: By providing authentic, verified human feedback, you provide the safety signal that cuts through the noise. Detecting scams on review websites and ensuring content integrity is no longer just a compliance task; it is an SEO task. You aren’t just building sentiment; you train the model, and the consumer, to trust you.
3. Getting chosen (abundant)
The reality: Shoppers aren’t just asking for “running shoes”; they are asking for “shoes for wide feet that handle slippery trails.” A simple star rating or product description cannot help AI shopping agents answer that.
The fix: To be the final answer, you need nuance. You need abundant content, a deep well of detailed, semantic feedback. This is where strategies like review syndication, product sampling and creator partnerships become critical. These aren’t just ‘campaigns’, they are the engines that generate the volume and depth needed to feed the algorithm and answer the consumer’s specific need. And connect that scale of authentic content seamlessly with all your media and channels.
The payoff: Community-fueled growth
In agentic commerce, when you get the mix right, the impact goes beyond a single transaction.
- Choice builds loyalty for the consumers: When a consumer finds a product that is truly right for them, validated by specific peer data, it builds confidence. Confidence is the foundation of retention. Being “chosen” is the first step to being loved.
- Community is the catalyst for brands: This is about riding the momentum of a community that vouches for you. Whether you use UGC management tools to spark conversation or leverage sampling programs to add depth, you build a business on a foundation of consumer confidence.
The core truth of AI shopping
The technology of discovery will continue to evolve and agentic commerce will make it harder to be visible. But the business logic and the human logic remain the same.
Ultimately, all brands want to get chosen, whether it’s by AI shopping agents or consumers. To do that, you must power up discovery and trust. We are building the infrastructure for all three, and we will unpack the entire roadmap at the Bazaarvoice Summit. If you want to see exactly how to operationalize this framework and future-proof your brand for the AI era, I’d love to see you there.
