As AI takes center stage at Shoptalk Spring 2026, a deeper shift is unfolding beneath the hype. Shoppers are increasingly finding products through AI assistants and agents. In April, ChannelEngine will launch AI Attribute Builder to help brands ensure their product data is complete and consistent across channels to stay visible as discovery evolves.
Morgan Stanley projects autonomous agents could influence up to $385 billion in U.S. ecommerce spend by 2030. Already, traffic from AI assistants and agents to retail sites has grown more than 1,300% over the past year. The impact is already visible on individual marketplaces: during last year’s Black Friday, Amazon’s AI shopping assistant Rufus drove 40% of sessions and influenced 66% of purchases, delivering a 3.5x conversion lift.
The systems powering search results, marketplace rankings, and AI-generated recommendations all rely on product data to decide what appears in front of shoppers. Listings with missing identifiers, incomplete specifications, or inconsistent information may still exist online, but they are far less likely to surface when algorithms decide what to show.
We’re seeing a fundamental shift in what product visibility means. The question used to be: how do I get my products found? Now it’s: how does an AI agent understand them? They don’t browse product pages; they evaluate structured data and decide what to recommend. Missing or inconsistent attributes don’t just hurt rankings. They take products out of the running entirely.
– Niels Floors, VP of Strategic Development, ChannelEngine
Introducing AI Attribute Builder
In April, ChannelEngine will launch AI Attribute Builder, a new capability that helps brands generate, enrich, and standardize product attributes to meet the specific requirements of each channel they sell on. This covers everything from complete specifications and descriptions to product identifiers that AI agents can read, assess, and recommend.
Protocols like Google and Shopify’s Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) and OpenAI’s Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP) are already defining how AI agents access and interpret product information. The more complete that information is, the more likely a product gets selected.
ChannelEngine helps brands manage product data, pricing, inventory, and orders across hundreds of channels from one place. AI Attribute Builder extends this with product data enrichment to meet the growing demands of both marketplaces and AI-powered commerce.
Clean, complete, consistent data has always mattered for marketplace success. What’s changing is who’s reading it. Today it’s marketplace algorithms. Tomorrow it’s AI agents influencing purchasing decisions. The brands that get their product data right now will be the ones that stay visible.
– Jorrit Steinz, CEO and Founder, ChannelEngine
ChannelEngine will be at Shoptalk Spring 2026 at booth 3077, where the team will be meeting with brands and retailers navigating the shift toward agentic commerce.
