Le nostre previsioni per il 2026

We called it a non-report: six trends we expect to take hold in digital business during 2026, drawn from what our experts see inside projects rather than from market research. What follows is a short version of what we presented that evening.

GenAI hangover. A large share of product content will be generated by AI, and brands will find that sameness costs conversion: when everyone uses the same models, content becomes indistinguishable, to people and to the models themselves. We expect the leading brands to reinvest in human-crafted content, and to tell their customers they do.

AI discovery. A growing share of product discovery will start in ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude or Gemini rather than on Google, above all for complex products. These models do not rank pages: they build trust from sources they consider credible, such as verified reviews, editorial mentions and structured data. Generative and answer engine optimisation (GEO and AEO) will stop being optional quickly.

From bidding for attention to earning AI trust. Paid search and social keep pushing acquisition costs up, to a level many mid-margin brands will not be able to sustain. Alongside, a second model is emerging: brands that appear consistently in AI answers acquire customers at a far lower cost.

Agentic browsers. Browsers such as Atlas and Comet are becoming places where an agent works on the user's behalf, with authority to spend. We expect delegated purchases, from complex products to recurring orders, to become mainstream, and checkouts to need to work for agents: open APIs, structured forms, catalogues a model can read.

AI as the operating system. The first conversational, AI-native operating systems will start to replace the browser: the user describes what they want, increasingly by voice, and the system orchestrates apps, sites and APIs to get it done. Traditional conversion funnels lose their meaning when nobody browses the site, and the AI decides which brands to consider on the basis of structured data and reputation.

Amazon as an autonomous commerce platform. We expect Amazon to move from e-commerce to autonomous commerce, with Prime as an AI concierge and Alexa ordering on behalf of the household, while keeping rival agents outside its walled garden. Its volumes and the trust of its customers make it the most likely player to bring agentic features to the mass market.

What it means for a brand today: invest in AI readiness and searchability, build a company knowledge base that AI can read, assess how ready the commerce stack is for agents, redesign CRM for the agentic era, and review the media mix.