The way we shop online just fundamentally changed—and I'm not being dramatic.

Google dropped a bombshell at NRF 2026 that's going to reshape how every marketer thinks about e-commerce: their new Universal Commerce Protocol lets customers discover products, build carts, and checkout entirely inside Gemini. No website visit required. Walmart's already onboard, with Shopify, Wayfair, and others following.

This isn't incremental improvement—it's a complete reimagining of the purchase funnel. And it's just one of several major developments that landed in the last 24 hours.

📍 Quick Preview:

Here's what's happening: Google announced that shopping will now happen inside Gemini. Customers can ask for product recommendations, receive curated results from participating retailers, and complete checkout without ever leaving the AI interface.

Walmart is the flagship partner, with their Chief E-Commerce Officer David Guggina putting it plainly: "We are moving past the era of the search bar. We aren't just meeting people where they shop, we're anticipating how they live."

The participating retailers include Walmart, Sam's Club, Shopify stores, and Wayfair—with more joining. The protocol will initially cover apparel, consumables, entertainment, and food items, with fresh, frozen, and marketplace items coming later.

Why does this matter so much? Because it validates what we've been seeing in the data: while AI-mediated search reduces traditional click-through rates, it significantly increases purchase intent and brand recall. The funnel isn't dying—it's moving inside AI assistants.

⚡ QUICK TIP

Start optimizing your product data feeds now. Conversational commerce rewards structured, detailed product information that AI can understand and recommend confidently. If your product descriptions read like keyword soup, you're going to struggle in this new environment.

Bento Launches Tanuki AI: Email Automations from Plain English

Bento unveiled an AI marketing agent that's genuinely impressive in its simplicity. Describe what you need—"create a welcome series for new subscribers" or "build an abandoned cart recovery flow"—and Tanuki generates the complete workflow including triggers, delays, conditions, and email content.

Two modes make this practical: Ask Mode confirms actions before executing, while YOLO Mode goes fully autonomous. Every action is reversible with one-click undo. At $0.01 per contact with no per-seat fees, this removes significant friction for small businesses building email automation.

Why This Matters: The barrier between "I know what email sequence I need" and "I have a working email sequence" just collapsed. This is what agentic AI looks like in practice.

Home Depot's Agentic AI Gets Localized Intelligence

The Home Depot and Google Cloud partnership expansion announced at NRF 2026 includes something I haven't seen before: their Magic Apron assistant now provides aisle-level precision, directing customers to exact product bays using real-time local store inventory.

They're also testing AI voice agents in select stores that replace rigid menu-driven automation with conversational AI across SMS, chat, and phone. Plus, their internal teams now use Gemini Enterprise to automate workflows, predict project bottlenecks, and draft marketing copy.

Why This Matters: This is the first truly localized AI retail agent I've seen deployed at scale. The combination of multimodal input (image upload), real-time inventory, and physical location guidance shows where retail AI is heading.

Gmail's Gemini 3 Turns Inbox Into Proactive Assistant

Google's rolling out Gemini 3-powered tools that transform Gmail from passive inbox to proactive assistant. Help Me Write now offers style-aware drafting with real-time refinements. Pro and Ultra subscribers can ask conversational questions in Gmail search to surface buried insights.

A new AI Inbox feature (in trusted tester mode) auto-generates to-do lists and suggests topics based on email content. Importantly, Google committed that email content won't train their models.

Why This Matters: This raises the bar for what users expect from email tools. Summarization, prioritization, and automatic action suggestions are becoming baseline expectations—which affects how recipients interact with your marketing emails.

CES 2026 AI Tool Announcements Worth Watching

Several major announcements from CES deserve attention:

Yahoo DSP launched agentic AI features for automated campaign setup, real-time troubleshooting, and AI-driven audience exploration—leveraging their 232 million US logged-in users.

Disney unveiled an AI video generation tool that creates CTV-ready commercials from existing brand assets, designed to help smaller advertisers access connected TV inventory.

Reddit launched Max Campaigns, their answer to Meta's Advantage+ and Google's Performance Max for automated targeting and creative selection.

Havas announced AVA, a unified AI ecosystem backed by €1 billion investment, featuring specialized agents for behavioral science, strategic analogies, and creative ideation—rolling out spring 2026.

What It Does: Transforms plain-English descriptions into production-ready email automation workflows

This is the kind of tool that makes you wonder why it took this long. Instead of learning complex automation platforms or hiring consultants, you describe what you need in natural language and Tanuki generates the complete workflow—triggers, delays, conditions, and email content.

What You Can Do With It:

What Makes It Noteworthy: The pricing model stands out—$0.01 per contact with no per-seat fees or feature tiers. For small businesses that know what automations they need but lack the technical resources to build them, this removes a significant barrier.

Pricing: $0.01 per contact, no per-seat fees Website: bentonow.com

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Yahoo DSP - Agentic AI Features AI-powered programmatic advertising automation

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Reddit - Max Campaigns Automated targeting and creative selection

Stagwell - The Machine AI operating system for marketing tools

With Google's Universal Commerce Protocol and Microsoft's Copilot Checkout (which saw AI-assisted browsing surge 700% during the 2025 holiday season), your products need to be discoverable inside AI conversations—not just on search results pages.

Step-by-step implementation:

First, audit your product data feeds. AI assistants need structured, comprehensive product information to make confident recommendations. Every field matters: detailed descriptions, accurate specifications, clear use cases, and complete attributes.

Second, think conversationally. When someone asks Gemini "What are the most recommended running shoes for beginners?", what would make your product the answer? Focus on addressing specific use cases and user intents in your product content.

Third, ensure your products are available through participating platforms. Shopify merchants are automatically positioned for these integrations. If you're on other platforms, check their roadmaps for AI commerce protocol support.

Success Metric: Track your product appearance rate in AI-assisted shopping queries. This is early days, but establishing baseline measurements now will prove valuable as this channel matures.

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The theme connecting today's news is unmistakable: AI isn't assisting marketing anymore—it's becoming the primary interface between brands and customers.

When shopping happens inside Gemini, when email automations build themselves from descriptions, when retail AI guides customers to exact shelf locations, we're watching the transition from AI tools to AI infrastructure.

The brands that thrive will be those treating AI visibility as seriously as they once treated search rankings. The 88% of marketers using AI daily aren't doing so because it's trendy—they're doing so because the alternative is falling behind.

Tomorrow's newsletter will dig deeper into what AI search optimization looks like in practice. The rules have changed, and there's a lot to unpack.

Until then,

Aleric & Greg KeywordSearch.com

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