“There’s  so many dials, right?” said Baranauskas. “That’s probably not how the future is going to look. It’s maybe two or three dials, then the rest is automated.”

However, leaders cautioned against adopting technology for its own sake. Steve Duran, VP and global commerce lead at Merkle, stressed the importance of grounding AI strategy in human behavior. “Just because this is the thing, the soup du jour, doesn’t mean we run to that channel,” he said. “It means we understand our people at a deep level, then we serve value to them. We understand where they search, how they live their lives, how they prefer to interact with us, then we aggressively invest in those use cases..”

(L-R) ADWEEK’s Lauren Johnson, NBCUniversal’s Evan Moore

When influencers and marketplaces own the relationship

That deep customer understanding is essential as new centers of influence reshape retail. Vera Bradley’s Hiatt noted that as consumers become more loyal to creators than to brands, a new paradigm of collaboration becomes key.

Baranauskas added that Shopify is actively enabling the trend. “Brands working together is an interesting thing that I see growing,” he explained. “From Shopify’s perspective, we have been doing that through products like Shopify Collective, where brands can merchandise each other’s products.”

A glimpse into the agentic future of shopping 

Looking ahead, the panel agreed AI technology would continue to create a more seamless and personalized shopping experience. NBCUniversal’s Moore pointed to the rise of “agentic commerce” within television, while Merkle’s Duran highlighted the growth of “first-party marketplaces” as a major trend.

Baranauskas concluded that a key role for platforms like Shopify is to put merchants in control of every part of the customer journey, making powerful new tools accessible and allowing them to both collaborate and compete. “I think Shopify has visibility right now into 12% of U.S. commerce,” he said. “This is an interesting position to be in, in terms of empowering our merchants to work together to form that buyer picture, as an example, or work together to enter OpenAI.”

Featured Conversation Leaders

• Andrius Baranauskas, Director of Product, Merchant Marketing, Shopify
• Steve Duran, VP, Global Commerce Lead, Merkle
• Alison Hiatt, CMO, Vera Bradley
• Scott Kramer, VP, Growth, AS Beauty 
• Evan Moore, SVP, Commerce Partnerships, NBCUniversal
• Kait Stephens, CEO and Co-founder, Brij
• Benjamin Tilton, Head of Digital, Kismet
• Lauren Johnson, Deputy Editor, Commerce, ADWEEK