Retail Media in the Agent Trade Age: From Automation to Human Connection (NRF 2026)

NRF26 left a clear message: Retail Media definitely enters its strategic maturity phase. It's not just about inventory, conversion metrics, or tactical efficiency. The discussion center migrated to data-oriented actions, but accompanied by more human experiences and a new balance between technology and sensoriality.

In this new era, AI agents start to act autonomously on behalf of the consumer, suggesting products, comparing prices, validating stock in real time, applying discounts and, in many cases, concluding the purchase without direct human friction. Retail Media is part of this. AI can organize data, cross behaviors and generate audiences, develop dynamic pricing, automate the asset mix, allocate formats and predict results.

Retailers and brands will have to convince not only people but intelligent systems, generating clear, structured, reliable and verifiable content. Speaking of a human perspective, we need to reposition ourselves to have an even more strategic interpretation and work in partnership with AI agents, in addition to being faster in decision making. 

However, this extreme technological efficiency generates space for physical, sensory and unexpected experiences. The more automated our life is, the more we miss what is real, tactile and human. Feeling the aroma of a new fabric softener, tasting a different wine, evaluating the texture of a knit, listening to a pleasant sound or even seeing a regular product exposed in a completely innovative way, make the journey more pleasant and dynamic. The physical store becomes the most strategic element of Retail Media and becomes a stage for discoveries. If AI takes care of the transaction, the physical space takes care of emotion. The new retail stops selling only products, to sell attention, stimulus and influence. 

In an agent-mediated world, influence does not just happen in the click, but in the previous construction of repertoire, preference and trust. The store becomes a powerful means of communication, capable of feeding both the consumer's memory and those of the intelligent systems that make the reading of the real behavior and choices.

The great strategic challenge, therefore, is not to choose between technology or the human touch, but to orchestrate both. Successful will be those who use the precision of the algorithms to eliminate operational friction, while they reserve the physical space and creativity to generate connections that the data, alone, cannot replicate. As automation accelerates, experience differentiates.

*Fátima Leal is director of agencies and partnerships at Unlimitil, a joint venture between the Carrefour Group and the Publicis Group created to accelerate the development of Retail Media in Brazil and Latin America