The Future of Agent Integration: Bespoke vs. Open Standards

The AI agent revolution isn't just coming—it's here. And for retailers, a critical strategic question is emerging: How will you integrate with the growing ecosystem of AI shopping assistants?

Two distinct approaches are taking shape: open standards like MCP (Model Context Protocol) and bespoke merchant programs from major platforms. Understanding this landscape is essential for positioning your retail business for success in the agent commerce era.

The Current Integration Landscape

Let's map out where we stand today. Browser automation is currently the dominant way AI agents interact with your site. ChatGPT's operator, for example, literally takes screenshots of your pages, runs them through its model, and determines what to click next.

This approach works, but it's inefficient, error-prone, and expensive for the AI companies to operate. It's the equivalent of forcing modern smartphones to view desktop websites instead of mobile-optimized ones—functional, but far from ideal.

As AI commerce grows, both retailers and AI platforms are seeking more elegant solutions. That's where the tension between open standards and bespoke programs comes into play.

The Open Standards Approach: MCP

Model Context Protocol (MCP) is emerging as the leading open standard for agent-native commerce. Introduced by Anthropic (creators of Claude) in late 2023, MCP has gained significant momentum.

Both OpenAI and Google have announced support for MCP, meaning ChatGPT and Gemini will soon be MCP clients. This creates a powerful network effect—with billions of users potentially having access to MCP-enabled agents in the near future.

MCP allows AI agents to interact directly with your product catalog and systems without the clunky screenshot-analyze-click cycle of browser automation. In MCP terminology, your product catalog is a "resource," and actions like search, purchase, or return are "tools."

The advantages are clear:

• Faster, more reliable shopping experiences

• Lower operational costs for AI platforms

• Standardized integration that works across multiple agents

• Greater control over how your products are discovered and presented

Think of MCP as the "USB-C of AI"—a universal standard that connects AI models to external data and systems without custom integrations for each API.

The Bespoke Programs: Platform-Specific Integration

Simultaneously, major platforms are developing their own merchant programs. Microsoft's Copilot has announced a bespoke merchant program. ChatGPT appears to be working on a Shopify partnership.

These platform-specific approaches are reminiscent of what we saw with Google Shopping years ago, where Google released a specification for product feeds to expose your catalog on their platform.

The advantages of bespoke programs include:

• Direct access to massive user bases

• Potentially deeper integration with platform-specific features

• Possibly earlier access to new capabilities

• Potential for preferential placement or promotion

However, these benefits come with the complexity of managing multiple integration points and staying current with proprietary specifications that may change on the platforms' timelines, not yours.

Strategic Considerations for Retailers

Given this evolving landscape, what's the right approach for your business? Rather than viewing this as an either/or decision, most retailers will need a thoughtful strategy that considers both paths.

1. Assess Your Channel Mix

Start by understanding where your customers are. Which AI assistants are they most likely to use for shopping? If your customers skew heavily toward a particular platform like Microsoft's ecosystem, prioritizing their bespoke merchant program might make sense. If your customers use diverse AI tools, a standards-based approach offers broader reach.

2. Consider Your Resources

Bespoke integrations require dedicated resources to build and maintain. If you're a smaller retailer with limited technical resources, focusing on open standards like MCP might give you more efficient coverage across multiple platforms. Larger retailers with dedicated teams might pursue both strategies simultaneously.

3. Evaluate Platform Commitments

Not all bespoke programs are created equal. Assess each platform's commitment to their merchant program. Is it a core strategic initiative or an experimental feature? How stable is their specification likely to be? Platforms with a track record of frequent API changes might represent a higher maintenance burden.

4. Consider Your Commerce Stack

Your existing commerce infrastructure will influence your integration approach. If you're on a major platform like Shopify that's likely to offer turnkey integrations with AI assistants, you might be able to leverage those partnerships. If you have a more customized stack, you'll need a more hands-on approach.

5. Plan for the Long Term

The agent commerce landscape will continue to evolve rapidly. Any strategy should anticipate continued change rather than betting everything on the current state of play. Building flexibility into your approach is essential.

A Hybrid Approach May Win

For most retailers, a hybrid approach will likely prove most effective:

1. Implement MCP for broad coverage - This gives you a standards-based way to expose your product catalog and commerce functionality to a wide range of current and future AI assistants.

2. Selectively participate in bespoke programs - For platforms with massive user bases or particular strategic relevance to your business, dedicated integration efforts may be justified.

3. Leverage platform partners - Commerce platforms like Shopify are likely to create turnkey solutions for their merchants. Take advantage of these to reduce your integration burden.

4. Build once, deploy many - Ideally, create an abstraction layer in your architecture that allows you to expose the same commerce capabilities across different integration points without duplicating effort.

The Integration Partner Question

This fragmented integration landscape raises another strategic question: Should you build and maintain these integrations yourself, or work with a specialized partner?

For many retailers, especially those without large technical teams, working with an integration partner will make sense. The right partner will:

• Keep up with rapidly evolving standards and specifications

• Maintain connections to multiple AI platforms

• Provide analytics on agent performance across channels

• Optimize your agent experience based on cross-client data

Think of this as similar to how retailers once worked with specialized mobile commerce partners during the smartphone revolution before bringing those capabilities in-house.

The Path Forward

The retailers who will win in the agent commerce era won't be those who pick the perfect integration strategy today—because there isn't one. They'll be the ones who build a flexible, adaptable approach that can evolve as the landscape changes.

What's certain is that agent traffic is growing exponentially. Whether that traffic reaches your products through open standards like MCP or bespoke merchant programs, the key is ensuring your products are discoverable and purchasable where your customers prefer to shop.

The e-commerce leaders of 2025 will be those who recognized this shift early and positioned themselves to capture agent-driven revenue regardless of which integration approach ultimately dominates. Will you be among them?