AI Agents in Ecommerce: Use Cases for DTC Brands

If you’ve spent any time reading about artificial intelligence lately, chances are you’ve come across the term “AI agents.” Maybe you’ve even seen it hyped up as the perfect solution to every business challenge under the sun—especially in the ecommerce world. But what’s real, and what’s just hype? Let’s dig in.

Introduction

In today’s ultra-competitive ecommerce landscape, business owners and marketers are understandably excited about anything that might give them an edge—especially if it’s powered by AI. And AI agents, in particular, promise to do everything from automating routine tasks to producing actionable insights at lightning speed.

But while the buzz is real, it’s important to cut through the noise and see what AI agents are, what they can (and can’t) do, and how you might integrate them into your ecommerce workflows without getting lost in the hype. 

Here at Comet (where we focus on helping ecommerce brands improve conversion with social commerce experiences), we’re big believers in balancing innovation with practicality. So let’s dive into what AI agents actually are and where they might move the needle for your business.

What are AI Agents?

At its simplest, an AI agent is a software program capable of analyzing data, making decisions, and taking actions—some autonomously, some in collaboration with human direction—to achieve specific goals. 

According to Triple Whale, AI agents typically combine advanced machine learning models with defined objectives and parameters, allowing them to function as semi-independent “operators” within your business processes.

For example, while a simple chatbot might respond to queries with a scripted FAQ, an AI agent can adapt its answers based on user inputs, historical data, or even subtle user cues.

At its core, an AI agent is like having a smart digital assistant that goes beyond simple automation. It can make decisions in fuzzier situations, and interact with different tools and systems to get things done. 

The main promises behind AI agents are: 

• Scalability: AI agents can handle massive amounts of data and automate repetitive tasks, freeing up human teams to focus on strategic and creative work. 
• Personalization: They can provide hyper-targeted offers, product suggestions, or customer support solutions by learning each individual’s preferences. 
• Speed: Rapid insights and responses allow you to optimize on the fly—be it your marketing budget or website experience. 
• Consistency: AI agents don’t take lunch breaks or sick days. They provide mostly consistent performance and output 24/7.

Use Cases for AI Agents

In theory, AI agents can be applied to any workflow currently done by a human. In practice, we have identified performance marketing (media buying & creative strategy), analytics, CRO and customer support as the key use cases for AG agents in their current form:

Media Buying and AI Agents

Media buying is often a balancing act: deciding where, when, and how much to spend on ads to get the best return on investment. According to insights shared in OKMG’s blog post, AI agents bring two main benefits here:

• Real-Time Optimization: AI agents can automatically test ad variations, targeting parameters, and budgets—shifting spend away from underperforming channels and doubling down on the ones that deliver. 
• Predictive Analysis: They can forecast trends or surges in demand for certain products, allowing you to allocate your marketing budget more strategically.

Automating routine tasks like bid management and budget allocation saves time and money. AI agents’ predictive abilities can also help identify winning strategies sooner, giving you a competitive edge.

However, media buying is only one part of the modern performance marketer’s skillset, and one that has been shrinking in relevance because of Meta and other advertisers’ use of AI agents in production. In fact, Meta's ad targeting algorithm is arguably the most notable example of agentic AI currently in use.

This algorithm, called Advantage Plus, automates the process of selecting ad viewers by considering viewer engagement, eliminating the need for media buyers to manually identify demographics and interest groups. Meta is increasingly encouraging advertisers to utilize this autonomous system for their campaigns with great success (for Meta and arguably the advertisers).

Creative strategy and creative process are what take most of the mind space of most advertisers today. But also on this front, there are first promising AI agents that help creative strategists to come up with advertising strategies and ideas to achieve a set goal. 

Compass, or “AI-powered System for Smarter Ads” from CTC, supports creative strategists in planning the creative concepts that they need to achieve a set of (sales) goals around the brand’s marketing plan. 

Based on the brands’ goals, their historical ad performance and account set-up, and after creating personas based on the brands’ customer reviews, it further breaks down the plan into individual campaigns covering the offer, audience, angle and even details out the copy for each specific campaign. All with “human in the loop” approval and adjustment possibilities. 

Analytics and AI Agents

In ecommerce, there’s no shortage of data—website analytics, purchase behavior, CRM data, and more. AI agents can help interpret that ocean of information in real time. For instance, Triple Whale’s Moby Agents are designed to surface key insights on your business’s performance automatically.

• Pattern Detection: Spot anomalies or trends in your sales data that might indicate new opportunities or threats. 
• Predictive Forecasting: Use historical data to predict future sales, product demands, or seasonal trends.

Because AI agents operate continuously, they can alert you to sudden drops in conversion rates or spikes in traffic as they happen, letting you react faster than traditional analytics dashboards.

Some may argue that AI Agents like Moby Agents are AI copilots, as they only interpret large datasets and identify patterns, rather than making semi-autonomous decisions. However, given the rapid pace of development, we can anticipate that most tools currently classified as "AI copilots" will soon be able to take action, pending human approval.

Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) and AI Agents

Conversion Rate Optimization is the art (and science) of turning website visitors into customers. Tools like Comet, our own conversion optimization software, use AI to analyze user behavior and identify friction points in the shopping experience.

AI agents can be used across the main workflows of CRO work:

1. Data analysis: identify patterns from Google Analytics, session recordings, customer reviews or survey data
2. Hypothesis development: generate & rank recommendations based on your data insights and brand context
3. Design & develop A/B tests: generate variants for UX/UI elements, copy, technical load speed improvements leveraging AI coding and content generation tools

While many CRO tools like Clarity from Microsoft have AI features that simplify the data analysis part, and there are many AI tools for rapid prototyping and coding storefront experiences, there are no widely applied AI agent tools on the market yet that act like a CRO marketing specialist.

At Comet, we are excited to contribute to the nascent space of AI-powered Conversion Rate Optimization for ecommerce brands with new feature releases coming soon making it easier for DTC brands to run semi-autonomous conversion rate optimizations for their paid social and influencer campaigns. 

Customer Support and AI Agents

Customer Support has been a natural use case for machine learning and AI, given the data rich space with tons of repetitive requests. Yet although handling customer inquiries can be time-consuming, it’s also a critical part of building brand loyalty. Gorgias highlights how AI agents are now capable of resolving basic questions instantly and even learning from each interaction to improve.

• Instant Responses: Customers get immediate answers to common queries like shipping times or return policies without waiting on a human support rep.
• Self-Guidance: AI agents can guide customers through troubleshooting by accessing and updating databases, for example, retrieving the delivery status from a delivery partner’s database and editing the delivery address without human oversight.

The potential of AI agents in customer support is reduced support costs, faster response times, and happier customers. AI agents working alongside human support agents ensure that complex issues get escalated appropriately, while routine questions get answered quickly.

Limitations for AI Agents in Ecommerce

While AI agents have the potential to significantly impact ecommerce, it's important to be aware of their limitations. Some of the key challenges include:

• General Data Quality and Context: AI agents are only as good as the data they consume. If your data is incomplete or inaccurate, your AI agent’s actions will reflect those flaws. Likewise, they may struggle with nuanced human contexts or brand-specific subtleties. 
• Over-Reliance: It’s tempting to let AI agents run the show. But a hands-off approach can be risky if the system encounters unexpected scenarios, especially in media buying where creative nuances matter or in CRO where over-optimizing short-term metrics can hurt long-term brand perception. 
• Analytical Gaps: Though AI can spot patterns or anomalies fast, it can’t fix data issues if the input is flawed or interpret nuances that a human analyst might catch—for example, the context behind a sudden traffic surge. 
• Customer Empathy: Some support interactions require a human touch. Relying solely on AI can make customers feel they’re missing a real connection, especially when dealing with complex or sensitive issues. 
• Ethical Considerations: AI-driven decisions can unintentionally reinforce biases in data. Monitoring and adjusting for fairness is crucial to avoid negative impacts on your brand and customers.

Bringing it all together

AI agents are more than just a buzzword. They’re evolving tools that can help ecommerce businesses optimize ad spend, streamline analytics, boost conversions, and deliver faster customer support. The hype exists for a reason—but it’s essential to remember that these tools aren’t magic bullets. They work best when paired with human oversight, high-quality data, and clearly defined objectives.

At Comet, we’re excited about what AI agents can do for conversion optimization specifically, because we see them helping ecommerce brands big and small find new opportunities in their user journeys. 

Ready to see how AI-driven conversion optimization can work for your brand? Check out Comet and let’s take your conversions to the next level—human insights and AI agents working hand in hand.