"AI Agents Will Kill Marketing As We Know It."

The vision is seductive in its simplicity. You tell your AI agent you need a beach vacation for March, and it handles everything - comparing options, checking reviews, negotiating prices, booking flights. Heck, it might even pack your suitcase for you.

Instead of being bombarded with ads and offers every time you search for some information, you interact purely through your agent, which knows your preferences and optimizes for your needs.

That's the hypothesis some well-known accounts recently shared on Twitter, suggesting that in this future, advertisements would target AI agents rather than humans directly. Multiple vendors would compete for the agent's attention, bidding for consideration while humans remain blissfully unaware of the marketing machinery at work.

It's a compelling vision that reveals a common misconception: the idea that digital marketing is primarily about the mechanics of conversion. In this view, marketing is just an inefficient middleman between desire and purchase, one that AI agents could optimize away.

It might look a little like this, compared to "old school" digital marketing on the left:

🔍 CLEAR VIEW: The Reality of Desire

The reality is more complex. Consider how luxury hotels actually sell rooms today. When Four Seasons markets a property, they're doing two very different things simultaneously. First, they're building desire - creating an emotional connection through Instagram imagery of perfect sunsets, video tours of immaculate suites, influencer stories about transformative experiences. None of these people are booking right now. But some of them will, months or years later, when the moment is right.

Only then does the second phase kick in: capturing that latent demand through search ads, retargeting, and direct response campaigns. This is where the mechanics of conversion matter - having the right price, being present in the right moment, reducing friction in the booking process.

AI agents might revolutionize this second phase. But they can't make you want a beach vacation in the first place. They can't create the emotional resonance that makes Four Seasons feel more desirable than a cheaper alternative. They can't build the brand associations that justify premium pricing.

This points to a crucial oversight in the "agents kill marketing" narrative: about 95% of potential customers aren't actively in market at any given moment. No amount of agent optimization can change that fundamental reality.

🔮 THROUGH THE GLASS: Three Layers of Trust

What we're really seeing is the emergence of a new layer in the marketing stack - one that bridges human desire and machine execution.

Think of it like a translation layer. At the top, we have traditional marketing creating awareness and emotional connection. At the bottom, we have agent systems handling discovery and transaction. But in between, we need something new: a way to transform human preferences and brand trust into signals that machines can verify and act upon.

This middle layer is where brands will need to:

• Convert qualitative preferences into quantifiable patterns

• Transform brand promises into verifiable claims

• Build trust signals that both humans and machines can validate

• Prevent gaming of automated systems

And that last point? It's not theoretical. Trust matters even more when we introduce more sophisticated technology. The smarter the system, the more it can be manipulated by bad actors. 

Last week, a YouTube investigation into Honey, PayPal's popular money-saving browser extension, exposed exactly what happens when we don't build proper verification into automated systems.

Here's how affiliate marketing traditionally works: When you discover a product through a content creator and buy it using their link, they get a commission - typically 5-15%. This rewards people who genuinely influence purchasing decisions. A fashion blogger who spends hours creating helpful content gets compensated when their recommendations lead to sales.

But according to the allegations, Honey was doing something very different. Rather than adding value to the purchase journey, they were allegedly:

1. Inserting themselves into purchase paths at the last moment

2. Overwriting other creators' affiliate cookies

3. Claiming commissions meant for actual influencers

4. Making behind-the-scenes deals with retailers for specific codes

In other words: they positioned themselves as consumer advocates while optimizing for their own profit at everyone else's expense. The scale is significant - creators claim millions of dollars in diverted commissions.

Now imagine this same dynamic playing out with AI agents. An agent could claim to be optimizing for your preferences while actually prioritizing vendors who pay the highest "consideration fees." It could overwrite brand preferences with its own optimization criteria. It could make decisions based on hidden incentives rather than true value.

This isn't just about affiliate commissions anymore - it's about who controls the entire purchase decision process.

🎯 FOCUS POINT: The Honey Warning

This is why that middle layer - the Bridge Layer - matters so much. We need systems that can:

1. Verify brand claims consistently

2. Track service quality over time

3. Build reliable preference patterns

4. Resist sophisticated manipulation

5. Maintain transparency in incentives

   
   

   

💭 FINAL THOUGHT: The New Marketing Stack

The winners in this new era won't be those who simply optimize for agents or double down on traditional marketing. They'll be the ones who create trustworthy bridges between human emotion and machine logic.

For brands, this means mastering three disciplines:

1. Emotional connection (Traditional Layer)

2. Verifiable quality (Bridge Layer)

3. Efficient systems (Agent Layer)

For marketers, it means developing new skills:

• Speaking both human and machine languages

• Building verifiable trust signals

• Creating persistent preference patterns

• Understanding algorithmic influence

• Maintaining transparency

The tools are changing, but the fundamental challenge remains: how do you create genuine preference in a world of endless choice? The answer isn't eliminating marketing - it's making it more trustworthy at every layer.

Like the way we think? Check out our digital marketing simulations! We've got Google Ads, Meta Ads, and a brand new AI simulation, all full of the best theory in an interactive and realistic platform.