For years, consumer tech observers viewed Glance—the SoftBank-backed lock-screen media platform owned by mobile advertising powerhouse InMobi—primarily as an Asian market phenomenon. But a quiet, seismic geographic transition has upended that narrative: the United States now drives more than 50% of Glance’s total revenue.
Riding this momentum, Glance is executing one of the most ambitious strategic pivots in consumer tech: transforming from an ambient content aggregator into a pioneer of agentic commerce—a paradigm where autonomous artificial intelligence agents actively discover, compare, and purchase products on a consumer’s behalf.
With tech heavyweights racing to capture consumer wallets through AI, Glance is making a bold wager on where retail is heading. Here is what is driving this pivot, how the technology operates across smartphones and living room screens, and what it means for shoppers, brands, and digital marketers.
The Core Projection
According to Glance Chief Operating Officer Mansi Jain, most online consumer purchases could be handled by AI agents in just a couple of years.
*Presented as Glance’s forward-looking executive thesis and market roadmap.
The Explosive Rise of Agentic Commerce
The phrase "agentic commerce" refers to software agents that do not merely show you ads or suggest keywords, but actively participate in the transaction funnel. Rather than spending 45 minutes browsing multiple storefronts, reading conflicting reviews, and manually re-entering payment credentials, an agent evaluates your style preferences, tracks price drops, and executes the purchase upon your confirmation.
This shift is backed by substantial economic forecasts. According to industry market projections, the global agentic commerce sector is forecasted to surge from $7.7 billion today to $65.5 billion by 2033.
Early adoption is concentrating heavily in fashion, apparel, and lifestyle retail—categories where visual curation and personal aesthetic play decisive roles.
| Dimension | Traditional E-Commerce | Agentic Commerce (Glance Model) |
|---|---|---|
| Discovery Mechanism | Search boxes & sponsored keyword ads | Ambient lock-screen inspiration & Smart TVs |
| User Journey | Friction-heavy manual browsing across tabs | Visual try-on on personal digital avatar |
| Transaction Execution | Manual checkout, carts, form fills | One-tap autonomous agent fulfillment |
| Primary Battleground | Amazon search ranking & Google SEO | Machine-readable inventory APIs & OEM integrations |
The Hardware Strategy: Winning the Surface Without App Stores
Most commerce platforms face a brutal user acquisition bottleneck: getting people to download an app and keep it on their home screen. Glance’s strategic edge has always been its surface-level integration directly into consumer hardware:
- Samsung Galaxy Smartphone Integration: Glance is natively integrated into millions of Samsung Galaxy devices, turning default lock screens into dynamic interactive portals without requiring app store visits.
- Expanding to the Living Room via Samsung Smart TVs: In the United States, Glance has rolled out agentic shopping experiences directly on Samsung Smart TVs. Viewers watching a show or lifestyle stream can interact with displayed fashion looks in real time using their remote or linked mobile device.
- Apple & Siri Collaboration: Glance is partnering with Apple to integrate ambient commerce triggers and agent capabilities alongside Siri and native iOS notification interfaces.
This hardware-first model has yielded tangible traction: Glance currently claims over 10 million monthly active users in the United States alone, providing a fertile testing ground for ambient retail experiments.
From Search-Based to Inspiration-Led Shopping
For twenty-five years, online retail has been governed by the "search box paradigm." You know you need white sneakers, so you type "white sneakers size 10" into Amazon, wade through dozens of sponsored listings, cross-check reviews, and make a purchase.
Glance’s agentic model flips this workflow on its head: it is inspiration-led rather than intent-driven.
Instead of waiting for a user to search, the platform serves ambient visual recommendations tailored to personal taste directly on their display. A user sees an autumn jacket ensemble, taps to see their own digital likeness wearing the outfit via real-time generative avatar modeling, and authorizes the agent to complete checkout across verified partner merchants in seconds.
"The future of retail is not about building a bigger catalog; it is about eliminating the distance between visual inspiration and physical delivery."
What This Means For Different Audiences
For Everyday Shoppers: Convenience vs. Autonomy
Consumers gain effortless discovery and visual certainty (like virtual try-ons), but delegating purchases to autonomous agents requires strict vigilance. Shoppers should audit auto-checkout limits, payment authorizations, and data-sharing permissions under their lock screen settings.
For Brands & Retailers: Structuring Data for Machine Eyes
In an agent-dominated ecosystem, your primary customer is no longer just a human scrolling a web page—it is an autonomous agent evaluating API feeds. Brands must ensure inventory feeds, product dimensions, return policies, and pricing tables are machine-readable and agent-crawlable. If an agent cannot parse your stock in real time, you simply do not exist.
For Marketers: The Death of the Search Monopoly
As consumer discovery migrates from traditional Google and Amazon search bars onto lock screens, connected TVs, and conversational agents, marketing teams must diversify ad spend away from keyword bidding toward ambient surface sponsorships and agentic partnership channels.
A Balanced Closing: A Strategic Bet, Not an Inevitability
While Glance’s pivot reflects undeniable technological momentum, business leaders and consumers must separate corporate forecasts from settled market reality.
Glance’s prediction that AI agents will handle most purchases within a couple of years is an aggressive corporate bet. Widespread consumer adoption faces formidable hurdles:
- Consumer Trust: Surrendering payment authorization and subjective aesthetic decisions to automated software requires a cultural shift that many shoppers will resist.
- Return Rates & Sizing Inaccuracies: Virtual try-on algorithms remain imperfect. If AI agents order poorly fitting garments, soaring return logistics will squeeze retail margins.
- Competitive Walled Gardens: As seen with Amazon blocking Meta’s Muse agent, dominant retail platforms will vigorously protect their proprietary customer relationships rather than ceding transactions to third-party lock-screen agents.
Treat "AI will do all your shopping" as a compelling, high-velocity trajectory rather than a foregone conclusion. But as Glance’s US revenue surge demonstrates, ambient commerce is already shifting from science fiction into everyday commercial reality.
Would You Let an AI Agent Buy Your Clothes?
Are you ready to let ambient AI agents recommend and order products directly from your lock screen or TV, or do you prefer hands-on control over every checkout? Share your perspective in the comments below!
Master Architecture: Autonomous agent commerce and financial transaction protocols are explored in our 2026 AI Tools & Autonomous Agents Guide, evaluating automated checkout authorization and user confirmation gates.
