AI Assistants Challenge Incumbent Marketplaces Over Customer Discovery and Ad Revenues

AI Assistants Challenge Incumbent Marketplaces Over Customer Discovery and Ad Revenues As AI shopping assistants like Muse and ChatGPT position themselves as the direct entry point for consumer decisions, major marketplaces face the risk of disintermediation. The struggle centers on whether platforms can maintain their high-margin advertising and commission revenue pools when assistants control customer discovery while routing orders to backend fulfillment. AI assistants do not need to build physical logistics networks; they only need to become the primary interface where purchase decisions occur. Incumbent marketplaces such as Amazon, DoorDash, and Instacart rely heavily on advertising profits, with Amazon generating $69 billion in ad revenue in 2025. Companies with software and payments models like Shopify and Toast welcome AI agents because they lack marketplace ad businesses to protect. Platforms must weigh whether AI agents bring incremental new demand or simply intercept existing orders while bypassing high-margin sponsored placements. Disintermediation and the Shift in Customer Ownership Marketplaces have historically sought to own customer relationships and payment flows. With AI assistants coordinating decisions—such as selecting a restaurant, ordering via Toast, and using DoorDash Drive for delivery without the user visiting an app—consumers may bypass marketplace browsing and sponsored listings entirely. Assistants do not need to replicate physical warehouses or delivery fleets to exert pressure; they only need to control where discovery occurs. Vulnerability of High-Margin Advertising Pools Incumbent delivery and e-commerce platforms built consumer habits through reliable execution, generating lucrative advertising operations alongside fulfillment. In 2025, Amazon earned $69 billion in advertising revenue versus $34 billion in non-AWS operating income, meaning high-margin ad dollars contributed more than reported operating income. A similar reliance exists for DoorDash and Instacart. If AI agents bypass platform search results, these primary profit engines are directly threatened. Divergent Incumbent Strategies and Platform Incentives Platforms evaluate agents based on incremental demand versus exposure to lost ad profits. Amazon blocked Muse to protect its shopping habits and ad revenue, while Instacart embraced an integration to capture incremental grocery volume. Meanwhile, back-end infrastructure and merchant software providers like Shopify, Toast, and Square readily partner with agents to expand merchant sales channels and software processing volumes without risking an internal marketplace ad business. Volume, Fixed Infrastructure, and Economic Trade-offs AI agents could drive net transaction volume by removing purchasing friction—turning abandoned planning into completed bookings and larger basket sizes. However, marketplaces face the challenge of whether they are gaining durable customers or merely one-off orders that must be re-won. Furthermore, platforms with heavy physical infrastructure must balance preserving ad margins against keeping fixed assets utilized, sometimes choosing lower-margin fulfillment over losing volume entirely.

当AI接管购物：平台经济学与客户关系的再分配博弈 随着AI助手直接介入商品发现与决策，互联网消费平台的客户所有权正在发生转移。这一变化直接威胁到依赖“发现流量”和高利润广告模式的传统电商巨头，同时为纯履约方、软件服务商以及AI平台开辟了新的博弈空间与商业模式。 AI助手无须重建履约仓库，只需掌控“决定买什么”的决策入口即可压制电商平台利润。 平台应对AI的态度取决于两点：AI能带来多少增量需求，以及平台自身多大程度依赖发现流量与广告利润。 亚马逊在2025年广告收入达690亿美元（高于扣除AWS后的340亿美元营业利润），此类高利润广告流若被AI绕过将面临巨大冲击。 不同企业立场分化：Shopify、Toast等软件工具积极拥抱AI接入，而亚马逊选择封禁Muse以维护其强势壁垒与广告底牌。 基础设施资产是一把双刃剑：既提供了议价谈判筹码，也为了维持资产利用率而被迫接受较低利润的订单。 客户所有权转移与广告利润池风险 AI助手并不需要重造亚马逊的庞大仓储，只要成为消费者的购买决策入口，就能削弱传统平台。在当前的消费互联网中，广告和佣金是核心利润支柱；2025年亚马逊广告收入达690亿美元，扣除AWS后的营业利润仅为340亿美元，假设广告贡献利润率为70%，其广告收益已超过披露的营业利润。一旦用户不再浏览商品流，赞助广告将失去曝光场景，进而从根基上撼动现有平台的利润结构。 阵营分化：拥抱增量还是防范解耦 企业对AI助手的反应因商业模式而异。亚马逊封禁Muse以保护自身牢固的用户习惯和广告业务；而缺乏庞大广告业务的Shopify、Toast与Square则积极接入，因其主要依赖软件与支付流水，乐于开辟新销售渠道。与此同时，履约功能与展示平台可能出现“去头化（headless）”拆分，例如AI可直接经由Toast下单并调用DoorDash Drive配送，绕过DoorDash自有的聚合平台与广告变现环节。 议价筹码：增量订单与既有基础设施的权衡 平台的谈判地位取决于其可替代性及增量价值。历史上达美乐披萨曾长期抵制外卖聚合平台以保护直接客户关系，后因获客价值而妥协；如今AI可能使DoorDash面临类似博弈。此外，亚马逊等拥有重资产基础设施的平台虽然具备强大的履约护城河，但也必须维持高货量来分摊固定成本。这使得它们在面对可能损失广告利润但能保住产能利用率的订单时，陷入进退两难的权衡。 AI驱动下的乐观前景与转化留存瓶颈 AI助手能够消除搜索、对比和协调的繁琐流程，使未成行的计划转化为实际订单，从而创造净增量。例如Instacart观察到其AI助手的订单包含更多商品且客单价高于平均水平。然而，平台若仅通过AI获取了单次“订单”而非产生直接黏性的“客户”，后续仍需反复争夺流量，这也意味着AI代理本身未来可能会向履约服务商收取客户接入费用。

No one wants to be disintermediated. It happened to Yelp and Tripadvisor with Google. It happened to everybody, with Apple. As a general rule, marketplaces want to own the customer relationship and payments, but whoever *has* the customers may get other ideas. When the power dynamics shift around “who owns the customer”, everyone scrambles for a chair - but some people lean in, while others move out. Everyone saw the contrast last week, when Amazon said, “Muse is banned!” while Shopify (who doesn’t have a scaled ad business like Amazon’s at risk here) leaned in and welcomed the integration. The stakes are that **AI assistants don’t need to replicate Amazon’s warehouses to put pressure on Amazon’s profits.** They need to become the place where you decide what to buy. The future state isn’t hard to imagine at all. Imagine asking an assistant to order dinner. It knows your budget, dietary preferences and when you will be home. The assistant chooses a restaurant, places the order through Toast and arranges delivery through DoorDash Drive. Toast can process the payment. DoorDash delivers the food. You never browse a marketplace or see a sponsored listing. Whether you like this or not will depend on two primary dimensions: 1) **How much incremental demand can an agent bring to you?** How much market share do you have, and stand to gain further (can you gain more customers and orders that offset the risk to your profit pool?) 2\) **How much of the platform’s profit depends on controlling discovery and the customer relationship?** How important is customer screen time to your business? (In other words: what percentage of your operating income is commissions and/or ad revenue?) Those incentives are different from bargaining power. A platform may want the demand an assistant brings, but the terms will depend on whether the assistant has credible alternatives for fulfilling the order. A company can welcome another sales channel while negotiating hard to preserve its economics. Amazon, DoorDash and Instacart earned their consumer relationships by doing difficult things reliably: providing comprehensive selection and a delightful user experience, delivering the order, handling substitutions, fixing whatever goes wrong. Those capabilities created habits and [valuable advertising businesses](https://www.a16z.news/i/199609775/grocery-is-an-advertising-business). Muse, ChatGPT, Grok Bot and Instinct cannot recreate the networks tomorrow. They can compare existing providers and route orders among those that meet the customer’s needs. The incumbents may maintain their fulfillment advantage, but that does not guarantee preserving their profit pool. In 2025, Amazon generated $69 billion in advertising revenue compared to $34 billion in operating income ex-AWS. Advertising revenue is not profit, but at an assumed 70% contribution margin, advertising contributed more than reported operating income. The same is true for DoorDash and Instacart. Advertising revenue and commissions are key to the consumer internet, and we could be on the precipice of a major shakeup. In 2025, Alphabet and Meta combined for nearly $500 billion in advertising revenue from being the center of gravity for distribution. These dollar flows have been so large and so durable, for so long, that if even *some* of them redistribute meaningfully, that funds an entire new business model and competitive ecosystem. For a marketplace, an agent can bring a new customer (great) or intercept an order it would have won anyway (less so). The first can be attractive even on less favorable terms. The second may leave the platform delivering the same order for less profit. The decision depends on how much new demand the agent brings and how much the marketplace earns from discovery and advertising. Domino’s was arguably the most important restaurant holdout from DoorDash and Uber Eats for years. (The “Garth Brooks holding out from Spotify” of pizza chains, you might say.) Management did not want to lose customer relationships to an aggregator which it would pay for a delivery service it already offered. But Domino’s came around to appreciating that aggregators were more than delivery infrastructure, and could help with discovery and customer acquisition. Domino’s kept its loyalty program for its own ordering platforms, but bet on new demand. Agents could now put DoorDash on the other side of the same negotiation. The early split is telling: Instacart is integrating with Muse, while Amazon is attempting to block it. Both choices can make economic sense. Amazon’s breadth and established shopping habits give it a stronger negotiating position: an assistant that cannot buy from Amazon is less useful to customers who already want to shop there. So Amazon can negotiate here, and if it ever welcomes Muse back, it’ll probably preserve some of the old economics. Instacart, on the other hand, has more room to gain orders which do not already begin their grocery shopping on its marketplace. Shopify, Toast and Square have a different incentive. They give agents access to merchants’ inventory, checkout, and operating workflows, opening another sales channel while continuing to earn software and payments revenue. Shopify’s Muse integration makes that incentive concrete. There is no comparable marketplace advertising business to protect. That changes the options available to agents. In the dinner example, Toast enables the order and payments, while DoorDash Drive provides delivery. The agent can bring the restaurant a customer without sending that customer through DoorDash’s marketplace. That puts pressure on commissions and advertising even if DoorDash still handles the order. My partner Seema has described the enterprise software version of this separation as [going headless](https://www.a16z.news/p/is-software-losing-its-head). We know that customers will *sometimes* pay up for convenience. They accept higher menu prices on DoorDash, which was necessary in order for the economics to work for restaurants. Would people accept higher prices shown to assistants, if they can order on Amazon and pay for you? Would we pay up for it to coordinate dinner with my friends’ agents, reconcile preferences and place the order? If that saves enough time and effort, a fee could support another business on top of the existing marketplace. But that fee to the assistant would not replace the marketplace’s lost advertising profit. Some of that spending would need to reach the marketplace, or be accompanied by enough additional volume or cost savings. Instacart has seen orders placed with its AI assistant include more items than Instacart’s typical basket and exceed its typical basket value. There is an optimistic possibility: less human browsing could mean more buying. Consumer platforms have spent years removing steps between wanting something and purchasing it. Assistants could remove much of the remaining work: researching, comparing, coordinating and checking out. The trip you never get around to planning becomes a booking. The dinner that stalls in a group chat becomes an order. That could change the economics of sharing the customer relationship. A marketplace might earn less on each order but more in total if assistants generate enough additional purchases. The question is whether they create enough new business to offset the profit lost on business that would have happened anyway. Travel illustrates how these forces can pull in different directions. If Expedia pays an assistant instead of Google to acquire a booking, it may be replacing one acquisition cost with another. If an assistant charges for an Airbnb booking that would otherwise have arrived directly, it introduces a new cost. Yet Airbnb’s differentiated inventory may give it leverage over those terms: an assistant that cannot offer the property a traveler wants is less useful. Airbnb could therefore have both a strong negotiating position and a strong incentive to protect its direct customer relationships. Moreover, how these economics will shake out depends on whether businesses are acquiring *customers* from new agentic traffic, or merely acquiring *orders*. If an agent takes me to Expedia and I actually really like the service, I might become a repeat customer who subsequently books directly. But if I return to the assistant for my next trip, Expedia has to win the order again. More bookings would not necessarily mean more customers who return directly. A third consideration is physical infrastructure that’s already in place. This is a double-edged sword for bargaining power, because having that infrastructure gives you genuine leverage for economics, but leaves you vulnerable in another sense, because you need volume to keep those assets utilized. For example, if you’re Amazon, you’re facing the prospect of retaining an order but losing advertising (and losing contribution margin for that order), you’d still prefer it to losing the order at all, and therefore having to spread infra costs across fewer orders. An assistant cannot assume fulfillment remains available tomorrow on the same terms it can get today. Higher fees, lower profits or less investment could absorb the gap. More volume and lower acquisition costs could offset part of it, especially when orders are new rather than rerouted. Assistants may also charge providers for access to their customers. The result will depend on how much business each side needs from the other. I expect the underlying networks to remain valuable. I’m less sure they keep the same share of the economics once someone else brings the customer. But the profit pools incumbents are defending could also support an entirely new generation of commerce companies, built on the infrastructure those incumbents made possible. *This newsletter is provided for informational purposes only, and should not be relied upon as legal, business, investment, or tax advice. Furthermore, this content is not investment advice, nor is it intended for use by any investors or prospective investors in any a16z funds. This newsletter may link to other websites or contain other information obtained from third-party sources - a16z has not independently verified nor makes any representations about the current or enduring accuracy of such information. If this content includes third-party advertisements, a16z has not reviewed such advertisements and does not endorse any advertising content or related companies contained therein. Any investments or portfolio companies mentioned, referred to, or described are not representative of all investments in vehicles managed by a16z; visit [https://a16z.com/investment-list/](https://a16z.com/investment-list/) for a full list of investments. Other important information can be found at [a16z.com/disclosures](http://a16z.com/disclosures). You’re receiving this newsletter since you opted in earlier; if you would like to opt out of future newsletters you may unsubscribe immediately.*