IPG Study Exposes the 'Agentic Commerce War' — Why Legacy Brands Are Losing

IPG Report Reveals Legacy Brand Disadvantage

IPG Study Reveals Legacy Brands Losing Agentic Commerce War

IPG study reveals legacy brands are losing the agentic commerce war on Amazon marketplace.

The "Agentic Systems in Commerce" division of Interpublic Group (IPG), one of the world's largest advertising groups, has published a report titled "The Hidden Economy Taking Share from Big Brands". Through proprietary analysis of Amazon marketplace data, the report reveals that legacy brands (major established brands) are significantly losing ground to challenger brands (emerging brands) across a wide range of categories.

The Rise of Third-Party Sellers in E-Commerce

In recent years, third-party sellers have rapidly expanded their presence in the e-commerce market. According to Adweek, third-party marketplace sellers now account for 62% of all sales volume on Amazon, creating a situation where major CPG brands face countless "long tail" competitors.

To address these environmental changes, IPG officially launched "Agentic Systems for Commerce (ASC)" in July 2025. According to Marketing Dive, ASC is a platform that leverages AI agent technology to automatically optimize e-commerce operations. It is built on real-time data from Intelligence Node, an AI analytics company IPG acquired for approximately $100 million, enabling detailed competitive analysis at the SKU and store level.

Amazon Marketplace Win Rate Analysis

Challengers Win in 16 of 18 Categories

The core finding of this report is the comparison of "sales win rates" on the Amazon marketplace. Of the 18 categories analyzed, challenger brands won in 16, with 15 of those categories showing a "dominant" advantage with win rate gaps exceeding 15 points.

The healthcare category is particularly striking, where the win rate gap between challenger and legacy brands reaches a maximum of 86 points.

Neglected Product Pages Prove Fatal

The biggest problem identified by the report is the update frequency of legacy brand product pages. Up to 90% of major brand product pages have reportedly gone unupdated for months to years. Furthermore, adgully reports that 84% of brands selling on Amazon fail to capture even one of the top 3 non-branded search keywords.

The report analyzes that major CPG brands face a structural handicap: "Leading CPG brands must manage across dozens of retailers, with thousands of SKUs per retailer, millions of digital shelf placements, each governed by different algorithms."

Product Discovery in the LLM Era and "Machine Speed"

The report sounds a particular alarm about the rise of LLMs like ChatGPT and AI answer engines as primary means of product discovery for consumers. The report states: "As LLMs and answer engines become the primary means of product discovery for consumers, brands that continuously update content will shape the information these systems rely on."

In other words, in the era of "agentic commerce" where AI agents select and recommend products on behalf of consumers, product page freshness takes on significance beyond SEO. Since AI prioritizes the latest information, brands that neglect updates risk disappearing from AI's "line of sight."

IPG's ASC Platform Offers a Solution

Interpublic Launches Agentic Systems for Commerce

IPG launches ASC to help brands accelerate and sustain profitable sales growth across channels.

IPG CEO Philippe Krakowsky stated: "ASC helps brands compete and win in an evolving and demanding marketplace, flattening the cost curve associated with complex commerce environments."

ASC has already been piloted with over 20 CPG brands, delivering double-digit sales improvements. The report estimates that implementing agentic systems could improve operating profit by over 9%.

Impact and Applications for E-Commerce Businesses

These findings contain important implications for all e-commerce businesses, regardless of size.

Tailwind for emerging brands and D2C businesses: Digitally native brands can update product pages at high frequency with fewer SKUs and agile decision-making. This represents a significant structural advantage in the AI agent era. In particular, focusing on capturing non-branded keywords increases the likelihood of appearing prominently in AI-driven product recommendations.

Actions legacy brands must take: Legacy brands urgently need to build content operations capable of "machine speed." Specifically, this means establishing regular update cycles for product pages, implementing AI-powered content optimization tools, and automating competitive monitoring by category.

Implications for Japanese e-commerce businesses: Similar structural changes are likely underway on Amazon Japan. As AI assistants like ChatGPT and Perplexity begin making product recommendations in Japanese, product information freshness and comprehensiveness will become sources of competitive advantage in the Japanese market as well.

Summary

IPG's study clearly demonstrates through data that the era of "being safe because you're big" is coming to an end. In the agentic commerce era, what determines winners and losers is not brand history or recognition, but how quickly and continuously businesses can optimize their digital shelf content.

As AI agents become deeply involved in consumer purchasing decisions going forward, brands unable to achieve "machine speed" operations will continue losing market share to emerging brands regardless of category. Now is the time for e-commerce businesses to reassess the update frequency and quality of their product pages.