According to our 2025 Future Shopper Report, marketplaces are the new storefronts, critical conversion hubs and the primary discovery engines for consumers. Ignoring their influence is like opening a physical store in a hidden alleyway – your products might be great, but no one will find them.
This digital shelf is fast becoming the "agentic shelf" where AI intermediaries decide what’s visible, relevant and credible. For their holiday needs, shoppers won't be the only ones searching – their AI companions will be as well. That means brands need structured, enriched data and consistent content quality to ensure they’re discoverable, shoppable and recommendable.
To win the algorithmic game, brands must master several interconnected pillars of the digital experience, optimizing for algorithms today, while training the agents of tomorrow. This goes beyond simple price adjustments to influence the AI that governs the digital shelf:
- Product Information Quality – The Foundation of Algorithmic Trust: Algorithms thrive on rich, accurate data to rank and recommend products. Our VML Future Shopper Report underscores that consumers demand accurate descriptions and high-quality media. This directly impacts item health and your product's visibility in automated discovery engines.
- Retail Media & Visibility: Retail media is the accelerator and strategic lever to ensure optimized products gain the necessary visibility within crowded marketplaces and directly influences the algorithms that govern product placement and recommendations.
- Pricing & Value (Algorithmic Appeal): Price remains a top consideration for consumers. Back to our VML Future Shopper report, which confirms that 92% of shoppers say the price of an item is important when shopping online, making it the number one factor.
