Estée Lauder’s Georgina Cunningham says AI shopping agents are reshaping discovery

AI assistants and creators are changing how consumers find products, according to Georgina Cunningham, who heads North American Amazon performance marketing for The Estée Lauder Companies.

Her remit covers media strategy across the full funnel, activation on retail media and commercial growth. The role brings brand, sales and analytics teams together so that real time data can inform fast-moving investment decisions.

She sees the shift in product discovery as one of the biggest changes in commerce media. “With the rise of agentic AI and the rapid growth of the creator economy with increased time spent on social platforms, consumers are increasingly delegating discovery and decision making to AI assistants while taking cues from creators,” she said.

As a result, shopping journeys are becoming less linear and more dependent on context. “Consumers are expecting shopping to be contextual, personalized and actionable.”

Planning for a fluid journey

Cunningham said campaign planning and execution have to change in response. “Marketers need to evolve their strategies and go to market plans to meet this ever pervasive fluid consumer journey.” That, she added, applies across all media rather than retail channels alone.

Commerce media is also altering how brands work with retailers and other partners. “Brands need to ensure they are pivoting internal operating structures to ensure connectivity across every facet of the go to market,” she said.

That means media, brand and commercial teams lining up with agencies, technology partners and retailers. “Shared outcomes must be at the core of go to market planning, with clear brand messaging, coordinated storytelling and aligned measurement across touchpoints.”

AI is quickly becoming another layer in that system. “AI’s role is shifting from helping people shop to shopping on their behalf,” Cunningham said. Agentic assistants increasingly shape what shoppers see and compare. “They are a new decision gate controlling what gets surfaced, compared and recommended.”

For brands, that means preparing content for algorithms as well as people. “Brands that win will make their products not only consumer optimized, but also machine readable.”

Not a standalone lever

Cunningham also pushed back on the idea that commerce media can work on its own. “The misconception is that commerce media is sufficient as a standalone lever to drive awareness, intent and conversion.”

In her view it is one part of a wider system. “It can scale visibility for your brand story and product education, but it cannot replace critical offsite drivers that build interest and relevance in the first place.”

Even when it delivers traffic, results depend on what shoppers find when they arrive. “If your onsite landing page or PDP is weak with poor imagery, descriptions, bad reviews or no inventory, you are leading to a lost conversion and wasted ad dollars.”

Measurement remains one of the sector's biggest problems. “While the options for where and how to buy commerce media continue to grow, ad budgets are not,” she said. Data spread across channels makes a consistent picture of performance hard to achieve. “Inconsistency in data availability, metric definitions or attribution models make it difficult to build a trusted unified view.”

Approaches such as MMM and MTA can help close those gaps, she said, but they have limits. “Their longer lead times mean you are often optimizing with yesterday’s insights, not today’s reality.”