By Patrick Harrington, Head of AI/ML at MetaRouter

I still remember where I was when the penny dropped or, in this case, when the share price jumped. Dom Burch, who hosts The First Mile Podcast, messaged me from Portugal where he was playing golf with his buddies:

“Hey Patrick, what’s going on? Walmart’s up three percent! $107 all of a sudden!”

The cause? Walmart had just announced its partnership with OpenAI, letting customers shop directly through ChatGPT. No website. No app. Just a conversation that ends in a purchase.

That single announcement lit up both the markets and the imagination of anyone working at the intersection of AI and commerce. Because it signalled something profound: the arrival of agentic commerce, when the act of shopping shifts from search to conversation.

From Search to Conversation

For the past 25 years, e-commerce has followed a familiar pattern:

A user types a query > A site returns a list > A transaction follows

But in the age of AI agents, that model is evaporating. Consumers will increasingly say things like: “Find me a cordless drill, good for DIY, under $150, available tomorrow.” And the agent, powered by ChatGPT or another large model, will do the rest. Compare. Recommend. Purchase.

No pageviews. No cookies. No clicks. Just intent flowing straight into a transaction.

As I said to Dom, this represents a new consumer surface, not a new channel. It’s on par with what Google Search was to discovery twenty years ago , except this time, everything happens within the chat interface. “Unlike Google, which has always relied on referral traffic to retailer sites, ChatGPT has full observability from top of funnel conversation to bottom of funnel conversion.”

At Walmart, this is already a reality. ChatGPT becomes the interface; Walmart remains the merchant of record; and checkout happens through an Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP), an open standard developed by OpenAI and Stripe. ACP allows for payments and data exchange without ever sharing sensitive information, a kind of secure digital handshake between the AI and the merchant.

For the consumer, it’s seamless. For the merchant, it’s revolutionary and slightly terrifying.

The Visibility Gap

Here’s the challenge: When commerce flows through conversations rather than websites, merchants lose sight of the first mile, those early, critical moments of discovery and consideration. In the old world, a retailer could see everything, impressions, clicks, add-to-carts, and use that behavioural data to retarget, personalize, and measure performance. In this new world, they might only see the add-to-cart event when it’s passed via ACP. Everything before that, the conversation, the intent signals, the back-and-forth refinement, lives entirely inside the walls of ChatGPT.

“That behavioural data stream really starts living at the add-to-cart moment,” I told Dom. “Everything above that, the discovery, the browse, the consideration , is invisible to the retailer.”

That means:

• Attribution collapses – you no longer know what drove the sale.
  
• Personalisation breaks down – intent never reaches your CRM or CDP.
  
• Retail Media Networks go dark – you can’t measure influence accurately.
  
  

Commerce still happens, but the data that fuels modern marketing disappears.

Reclaiming the First Mile

That’s where MetaRouter comes in.

MetaRouter provides a first-mile control layer, sitting between the AI agent and the merchant’s data infrastructure to restore lawful visibility and data intelligence.

Think of it like this:

1. [User] → [AI Agent] ⇄ [MetaRouter] ⇄ [Merchant APIs / Analytics / RMN]
2. ACP defines how the handshake works. MetaRouter defines what happens next.

Our job isn’t to change the transaction; it’s to ensure that the right data gets to the right place, at the right time, with the right permissions.

We:

• Verify consent and jurisdiction to ensure lawful data use.
  
• Capture and normalize signals coming off new AI-driven surfaces.
  
• Route those signals responsibly into the merchant’s analytics, retail media, and customer systems — in real time.
  
  

“We see that data in mid-flight,” I explained. “Before it’s ever sent to any advertising destination. That’s the first mile, where lawful visibility and control truly matter.”

From Friction to Fluidity

This shift demands a new mental model of commerce. The future isn’t a website or an app. It’s a network of fluid surfaces, ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, mobile, in-store, social — all connected by intent rather than URLs.

MetaRouter gives merchants eyes on every one of them, helping them:

• Attribute conversions across new conversational channels.
  
• Feed verified intent data into their retail media networks.
  
• Maintain a lawful, transparent customer journey, even when it starts inside someone else’s AI.
  
  

“In this agentic era, you’ve got to measure before you can control,” I said. “And to control, you need visibility — in real time.”

The Road Ahead

Agentic commerce is no longer hypothetical. With Walmart, Etsy, and Shopify all adopting ACP, the race is on to define the next era of digital retail. Early movers like Walmart are shaping the rules of engagement, publishing their catalogues directly into these conversational systems and taking the first-mover advantage. But for every brand and retailer, one truth remains: data control at the first mile has never mattered more. MetaRouter’s mission is to help companies navigate this transition confidently, keeping data lawful, actionable, and connected, even when discovery, engagement, and purchase happen simultaneously. Because in this new world, when commerce starts talking back, the merchants who master the first mile will own the next decade of commerce.

Read the Full Transcript:

Dom: Welcome back to The First Mile Podcast with me, Dom Burch. This is the podcast where we explore the very beginning of the digital data journey, where every click, every conversation, every interaction first takes shape. Now listen, when I'm away on vacation, I don’t normally check the stock price while I’m on the golf course. But there I was in Portugal with my mates when I saw Walmart had jumped 3% overnight. I messaged the MetaRouter group chat and said, “Hey, what’s going on? Why are they suddenly at 107?”

Turns out it’s all down to Walmart’s partnership with OpenAI, letting customers shop directly through ChatGPT. No website. No app. Just a conversation that ends in a purchase.

And that moment right there might mark the beginning of agentic commerce. That’s right, agentic commerce. When commerce starts talking back. Or as someone put it on LinkedIn the other day: when chat meets checkout. I quite like that.

So, to unpack all of this, I’m delighted to welcome back, and it’s only been a few days, Patrick Harrington, Head of AI and Machine Learning at MetaRouter. Patrick, welcome back to The First Mile.

Patrick:Dom, thanks for having me, great to see you again.

Dom: go away for a few days and boom, another major shift in our world. We were just talking about GEO versus SEO, and now this. For people who’ve been hiding under a rock, can you explain what’s going on and why this is such a seismic moment?

Patrick: This really is a historical fork-in-the-road moment, and the direction of that fork has been chosen by the largest retailer in the world, Walmart.

The Wall Street Journal reported that Walmart has integrated with ChatGPT to enable in-app commerce, meaning I can search for things, have a conversation about a project, and ultimately check out — all within the app.

So Walmart now joins two others with this capability: Etsy and Shopify. Both of those are more in the long-tail of retail, offering unique goods and services. But Walmart brings the 800-pound gorilla perspective — showing where they believe the puck is heading for agentic commerce.

They seem to have strong conviction that ChatGPT can drive both discovery and conversion, not just fringe experimentation. This feels as transformative as Google Search once was for discovery and the conversion funnel.

The big difference? With ChatGPT, everything happens within the app. No referral traffic. No bouncing out to websites or apps. ChatGPT has full visibility — top-of-funnel intent, mid-funnel conversation, and bottom-funnel conversion. Google never had that level of observability. They always had to infer what people were buying.

Dom: And it’s called ChatGPT, not AskGPT, for a reason, right? Because of that back-and-forth conversation.

So let’s walk through an example. Say a user goes into ChatGPT and says, “Hey, I’m looking for a cordless drill.” It comes back with some options based on what it already knows about me — maybe I’ve said I’m doing a DIY project, my wife’s been after me to fix the bathroom, I’m not that handy, I’ve got a mid-range budget.

ChatGPT gives me a few recommendations. From there, what’s actually going on behind the scenes? What’s the merchant seeing? What’s happening technically behind what feels like a casual chat with my robot friend?

Patrick: Great setup. First, ChatGPT does maintain some understanding of the end user. You can even ask it, “What do you know about me?” and you’ll be surprised.

What’s under the hood between ChatGPT and Walmart is fascinating. In this setup, the retailer remains the merchant of record. They own the relationship with the end customer — fulfillment, payment orchestration, everything.

So how do those two worlds bridge together?

A few months ago, OpenAI and Stripe created an open-source, programmatic framework called the Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP). Think of it as an API handshake that allows payment orchestration — even passing payment information without directly exposing payment data.

In this model, ChatGPT handles the conversation and intent capture. Once the user hits “add to cart,” that’s when the retailer’s systems come into play. The add-to-cart moment is the start of the handshake.

Dom: That’s critical, because up until now, the merchant saw everything before the point of sale. All the browsing, the discovery, the social ads — all those signals.

Now, in this new world, the merchant might only see the moment I say “Yes, I’ll buy that.” So if I don’t check out — if I don’t click “add to cart” — does the merchant see anything?

Patrick: No. If you have a long, rich conversation about that drill, your motivations, your wife’s nagging, unless you add to cart, that entire interaction lives within ChatGPT.

There’s no equivalent of “browse behavior” here. Retailers only see the API call at the point of add-to-cart or edit-to-cart. That’s when their behavioral data stream begins. It’s much deeper in the funnel than what they’re used to.

Dom: And that’s what crystallizes the “first mile” idea, right? Because what you’re describing breaks the traditional marketing funnel; discovery, shortlisting, checkout, fulfillmentall those signals that used to be visible are now disappearing.

That invisibility can’t be sustainable long-term, can it? Retailers aren’t going to be happy not seeing the journey that leads to purchase.

Patrick: Exactly. There will likely be a lobbying effort carrots and sticks, to push for more upstream visibility in future versions of the Agentic Commerce Protocol.

But right now, the merchant only sees add-to-cart through conversion.

That’s why first-mile data control becomes so important. The first-mile is where MetaRouter lives, capturing those API calls in real time, enforcing privacy, and routing data responsibly before it flows to any downstream destinations.

It’s the same principle we’ve applied for years in web, app, and in-store data now extended to this entirely new surface: conversational commerce.

Dom: If I’m a marketer listening to this, I’m thinking — hang on. This feels like when streaming sports came along. We went from ultra-HD TV to buffering video, but we tolerated it for convenience.

Now as marketers, we’re losing attribution, personalization, retargeting, and even retail media insights — all the things we spent years perfecting. That’s a big shift, and I don’t think most people have fully realized what’s happening yet.

Patrick: It’s déjà vu from the early mobile web days. A new consumer surface always changes measurement, conversion, and optimization.

Marketers need visibility into this new channel to measure, monetize, and maintain parity with their existing channels; web, app, in-store.

And yes, this is the first real challenge to Google’s “perfect” search model in two decades. Those who adapt early, by normalizing and activating data from this new modality — will have a serious advantage.

Dom: So how does MetaRouter fit into this practically? Explain it like you’re talking to someone sipping tea in Yorkshire.

Patrick: At its core, MetaRouter helps marketers orchestrate campaigns across channels using real-time, privacy-safe data.

As agentic commerce grows, brands will need to run campaigns based on add-to-cart behavior, post-transaction data, and consented signals coming from within ChatGPT or other models.

Our first-mile position means we can normalize, enrich, and route that data, in real time, the same way we already do for desktop, mobile, and store data.

That gives marketers a hedge. They can experiment, measure, and optimize across old and new surfaces simultaneously.

Dom: And that real-time element, milliseconds between intent and activation is what makes this work.

Right now, someone might be chatting in ChatGPT, hovering over a product, then instantly seeing an ad on Instagram nudging them to buy. That’s real-time orchestration.

But as you said, that visibility is disappearing inside large language models. So what needs to happen next? What’s the playbook, the new SEO for this agentic era?

Patrick: If you think back, Google’s innovation was PageRank, using quality signals across the web to determine what to show users.

Something similar will happen here: a new kind of “quality score” or alignment model. Large language models will weigh factors like brand affinity, past behavior, and fulfillment reliability.

There will absolutely be a paid advertising model layered on top. And because these systems see full-funnel behavior, they’ll be able to close the loop on conversion — something even Google never fully achieved.

So this is a massive shift — and Walmart’s first-mover position shows they’re not afraid to lead.

For marketers and data officers, the imperative is clear: control your first-mile data, capture it responsibly, and be ready to activate it in these new conversational ecosystems.

Dom: We’re already at 25 minutes, which is wild. Anything else we haven’t covered that’s important?

Patrick: One last thing, part of the ACP protocol allows retailers to publish their product catalogs directly to ChatGPT.

That means no crawling or scraping. Retailers push their catalog, name, brand, price, media, into a structured API endpoint. ChatGPT then uses that to index and match products to user intent.

So it’s not just about data flow — it’s about structured collaboration between merchants and models. It’s very similar to what happened with Google Shopping, but faster and smarter.

Dom: That’s fascinating. It’s almost like ChatGPT has spent the last two years warming everyone up for this. And Walmart’s move feels classic Walmart — either you get dragged there later, or you go all-in now. They’ve gone all-in.

Patrick: Exactly. Walmart’s massive fulfillment network and partnerships give them confidence to lead. And they’re betting big that conversational commerce is the next frontier. There’s definitely a first-mover advantage here.

Dom : To wrap it up, the three big things for brands in this agentic era:

1. Maintain visibility into your customer journeys.
2. Enforce privacy-first, lawful data routing.
3. Power AI-driven personalization and measurement — without losing control.

That’s the first mile in action.

Patrick, this has been brilliant — and slightly terrifying in the best possible way. Thanks so much for joining us again.

Patrick: Thanks, Dom. Always great to be here — and yes, this is just the beginning. Agentic commerce is real, and it’s moving fast.

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