Axios House: Brands told to act fast on AI commerce

CANNES, France — To deal with the rise of AI agents shopping on their sites and recoup value, brands have to negotiate deals, restructure their content and take risks — in a short amount of time.

Why it matters: AI companies are profiting from content and data they didn't pay for — intercepting audiences before they ever reach a publisher or brand — and brands need to act now before it's too late, The Atlantic publisher and chief revenue officer Alice McKown said.

• Publishers and brands are sitting on content and data that AI companies need — but only the ones willing to block and build new infrastructure will get paid for it, she added: "The value exceeds the risk, but only if you act before the window closes."

Axios' Sara Fischer and Kerry Flynn moderated discussions with McKown and Ekta Chopra, chief technology and AI officer of Elf Beauty. The June 25 event was sponsored by Cheq.

What they're saying: The Atlantic has licensing deals with OpenAI, Particle and Parallel — but McKown said the real forefront is getting when AI agents access content on behalf of users, not just when humans subscribe directly.

• "You can crawl if you have a deal with us," McKown said. "The next thing is we're going to bounce everyone unless we feel" it's worth the security and other issues.
• The publication has 1.5 million paid subscribers, McKown said — and is "actively talking about" whether subscriptions could be sold on AI chat platforms.

How it works: Brands can't just repurpose their existing content for AI — the entire structure has to change, Chopra said. AI tools need full conversational context, not keywords, which means lots more content and a different format.

• The average search used to be five words. On ChatGPT, it's now 23, Chopra said. "I need a red lipstick" has become "I need a red lipstick for brown skin under $5 — I'm going to France."

• "If it's not in the right structure, it's not going to show up on an LLM," Chopra said.

Between the lines: The brands that move fastest will have a structural advantage — Elf already has three internal teams dedicated to agentic commerce, back-office AI operations and workforce restructuring, Chopra said.

• Roles are already changing, she added. Supply chain planners who once built complex models now need to think like data scientists.

Content from the sponsor's remarks:

In a View from the Top conversation, Cheq CEO Guy Tytunovich and chief revenue officer Rory Stern said AI agents represent a new type of customer.

• "Entity, identity, intent — that's what you need to decipher," Tytunovich said. "Is it a human or an agent? Is it the real person or someone pretending to be them? And what are they here to do?"