• Latestly AI
  • Posts
  • SEO is dead. Long live the AI Storefront!

SEO is dead. Long live the AI Storefront!

Google’s bots made you optimize for keywords. Now you’ll be optimizing for AI agents that shop instead of search.

In partnership with

Find your customers on Roku this Black Friday

As with any digital ad campaign, the important thing is to reach streaming audiences who will convert. To that end, Roku’s self-service Ads Manager stands ready with powerful segmentation and targeting options. After all, you know your customers, and we know our streaming audience.

Worried it’s too late to spin up new Black Friday creative? With Roku Ads Manager, you can easily import and augment existing creative assets from your social channels. We also have AI-assisted upscaling, so every ad is primed for CTV.

Once you’ve done this, then you can easily set up A/B tests to flight different creative variants and Black Friday offers. If you’re a Shopify brand, you can even run shoppable ads directly on-screen so viewers can purchase with just a click of their Roku remote.

Bonus: we’re gifting you $5K in ad credits when you spend your first $5K on Roku Ads Manager. Just sign up and use code GET5K. Terms apply.

You know how the web evolved from:

static pages → mobile-first → personalized apps → conversational chatbots.

Now we’re entering the next phase: Agentic Commerce — where AI agents shop for you.

And the newest infrastructure trend quietly powering this shift?

AI Storefronts — dedicated subdomains built for AI agents.

Think: instead of brand.com, you’ll soon see ai.brand.com — a space where both humans and AI agents can browse, query, and even buy through conversation.

What’s an AI Storefront, Really?

Imagine a version of your website that’s not designed for human clicks — but for AI comprehension.

An AI storefront hosts your product catalog in structured, machine-readable form so that an AI (like ChatGPT, Siri, or your customer’s personal assistant) can ask things like:

“Find me a waterproof jacket under £120 from UrbanWear.”

And your AI subdomain responds with:

  • Product suggestions (with descriptions, stock, variants)

  • Pricing and inventory details

  • Links or APIs for checkout

It’s the Google indexing moment for AI agents — if your brand doesn’t have an AI storefront, it might be invisible in tomorrow’s agentic economy.

How It Actually Works

1. Subdomain setup

Brands spin up a parallel endpoint like ai.brand.com with APIs and structured schemas — no need to rebuild the existing site.

2. Structured catalogs

Products get converted into an AI-readable schema (think metadata, attributes, related items, and price ranges).

3. Conversational layer

A chat-style interface sits on top, allowing users (or AI agents) to ask open-ended questions and receive personalized product suggestions.

4. Agent-driven checkout

Here’s the kicker: these storefronts now allow AI agents to transact.

A user could say,

“Order that one in size M,”

and the system completes checkout via a secure, agent-verified flow.

5. Hybrid design

Humans can chat, browse, or tap; AI agents use the same endpoints programmatically.

Why It Matters

  • Discoverability by AI – When users ask assistants like ChatGPT, “Find me the best sneakers under $150,” AI Storefronts ensure your products actually appear in those results.

  • Frictionless experiences – No forms or menus. Just conversation.

  • Future-proofing – As AI agents become default shopping intermediaries, only “agent-readable” brands will stay visible.

  • Parallel adoption – It doesn’t disrupt your existing e-commerce; it layers on top.

TL;DR: Websites were built for people.

AI Storefronts are built for people and their agents.

Example: A Fashion Brand - UrbanWear.ai

Let’s say UrbanWear launches ai.urbanwear.com using New Gen’s platform.

  1. Their product data (jackets, sneakers, accessories) becomes structured JSON-based catalogs.

  2. A user asks ChatGPT: “Find me a navy bomber jacket that matches black jeans under £200.”

  3. The agent fetches from ai.urbanwear.com, displays options, and even completes checkout using stored preferences.

  4. Meanwhile, another AI aggregator (like Klarna’s AI shopping assistant) discovers the same catalog and includes UrbanWear in its recommendations.

Just like SEO once made your brand visible to Google — AI Storefronts make your brand visible to agents.

The Emerging Stack

Layer

Example Tools

AI Interface / Agent Layer

New Gen, GPT-4o, Claude 3.5, LangGraph

Data Structuring / Retrieval

Pinecone, LlamaIndex, pgvector

Commerce APIs

Shopify Hydrogen, Stripe, Visa Intelligent Commerce

Conversational UI / Hosting

Vercel, Cloudflare Workers, Next.js

Observability

OpenTelemetry, Grafana, Mixpanel

Market Snapshot

💰 New Gen just raised $4.5M seed to build “AI-native storefronts” for brands worldwide.

🛒 BCG predicts that by 2026, 30–40% of digital commerce will involve some AI-agent mediation — a search, a recommendation, or even a full transaction.

🌍 PYMNTS and The Paypers report that dozens of retail brands are already piloting these subdomains quietly under the hood.

Final Thoughts

Remember when brands raced to become “mobile-friendly”?

Now, the race is to become AI-friendly.

AI Storefronts are how your brand gets found by machines.

And the brands who start experimenting today — even a small “ai.” subdomain with structured metadata — will dominate tomorrow’s conversational commerce.

🔗 Sources / References

Marco Fazio Editor,
Latestly AI,
Forbes 30 Under 30

We hope you enjoyed this Latestly AI edition.
📧 Got something for us or do you want to collaborate?
Hit reply and let us know!