New interactive ads. What happens when AI represents your brand?

This is HUGE. New ad formats signal a shift from brands optimising to be found and recommended by AI to preparing to be represented by it.

Updated October 2, 2026

Read time 4 min read

In May, Google announced Business Agents for Leads. Recently, OpenAI announced Sponsored Agents in ChatGPT Ads – two new AI-powered advertising experiences that point to a significant shift in how brands may connect with customers through AI.

While neither of these new advertising experiences is currently available to Australian advertisers, we’re watching them closely and talking to our clients about what they could signal for the future of advertising – and the continued shift of the customer journey beyond the website.

Google Business Agents for Leads: Customers can interact with an ad by clicking ‘Chat’ to get instant answers based on an advertiser’s website and connected business data (eg. Google Business Profile). Users can fill out a form within Google to connect with the business without ever visiting the site.

Sponsored Agents in ChatGPT: Sponsored Agents are a new (pilot) advertising format that lets people chat with an AI representative of a business in ChatGPT. People can open a conversation from an ad to ask questions about the business’s products or services.

The rise and rise again of the zero-click customer journey

“Zero click” has been top of mind for brands over the last two years, as we’ve seen more evidence of top-of-funnel queries being answered by AI without consumers clicking through to a website.

93% of searches in AI Mode end without a click
We estimate ChatGPT’s click-through rate at less than 1%*

But the shift isn’t stopping at discovery. These new AI ad formats suggest the next layer of the customer – interaction with brands – could increasingly happen within the AI environment too.

And the infrastructure for conversion is already being built. For example – OpenAI is enabling product discovery and checkout within ChatGPT for limited markets and brands (also not yet available in Australia).

We’ve seen this kind of shift before. When shopping moved from physical stores to websites, the customer journey changed – from discovery and comparison through to purchase. Ecommerce also opened businesses up to new customers, markets, and opportunities. Marketing evolved with it.

Over the last two years, we’ve moved from optimising websites to be clicked to building a broader digital footprint that AI can discover, understand and trust. The next potential shift is from being discovered and recommended by AI to being represented by AI – with brands having AI representatives participate directly in conversations with customers, outside of their own environments.

And that raises a new question for marketers: how do we make sure AI can accurately represent our brand?

AI platforms as the new third-party retailer

We can think about this like an evolution of the third-party retailer. The AI environment becomes the place where a customer discovers, compares and potentially chooses a product. That creates a potential trade-off for brands: less control over the customer experience, but perhaps much greater access to customers wherever they are asking questions and making decisions.

Thinking about it this way, the question becomes: what does AI need to know to be the best possible representative and salesperson (salesbot?) for your product?

What does it need to know about your products? What makes them different? How should it answer questions about price, quality and competitors? What about after sales customer care? And where does that information need to live?

What does AI need to know to be the best possible representative for your brand and product?

What does this mean for SEO & Search Advertising? A Connected perspective.

We see SEO as making sure our clients are found, understood and recommended wherever their customers are searching. That has already evolved beyond websites – and we expect it to continue evolving.

Under this definition, a future discipline may include building, training and managing how AI representatives deliver the brand experience inside various AI platforms. That means thinking now about what information AI needs to accurately understand and represent a brand – and where that information needs to exist – today and in the AI environments of tomorrow.

For Australian marketers, the key point isn’t whether customers can do this today. It’s that the infrastructure is being built for a future where the entire customer journey could happen within AI platforms, rather than in brand-owned environments.

Want to understand more about how AI is changing consumer behaviour – and what it means for your marketing strategy? Let’s Connect.

*ChatGPT CTR source: endless reading and data analysis.

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