WPP Media’s collaboration with OpenAI, including work involving brands such as KFC and Mamaearth, signals a broader shift in how brands could approach product discovery and comparison, with large language models (LLMs) expected to play a growing role in the commerce journey SVP, E-commerce, WPP
Speaking at the launch of WPP Media’s ‘From Concept to Scale: The Commerce-First Launch Playbook for India’, Taneja said discovery and comparison are among the key commerce functions that LLMs are likely to take over as consumers increasingly turn to AI-powered interfaces to research products and make purchase decisions.
“If I were to break this down to a few pillars which are important in terms of commerce outcomes, I would say discovery, comparisons, which is also awareness, and then you have the likes of pricing, availability, inventory, etc. So discovery and comparisons, they’re largely sort of, LLMs will sort of take over,” she said.
Taneja said consumers could increasingly use LLMs and platform-specific AI assistants to discover products, compare options and narrow down their choices, while pricing, inventory and availability could increasingly be powered by AI on the backend.
The shift comes as commerce itself is evolving into a broader innovation and learning engine for brands. WPP Media’s playbook notes that online platforms are no longer merely distribution points, but environments where brands can discover demand, test propositions and learn from live shopper behaviour.
According to the report, observing what consumers discover, click, consider, abandon, trial, review and repeat can provide sharper feedback than stated intent captured through traditional market research alone.
Consumer discovery moves from marketplaces to LLMs
Taneja said the impact of LLMs could be particularly significant for high-engagement purchases, where consumers typically spend more time researching and comparing products.
“For me, I’m now finding it difficult to sort of go to Amazon and say, I want this, I want that, and then scroll through and then compare yourself,” Taneja said.
She said that while consumers may continue to make routine or impulse purchases directly through commerce platforms, high-consideration categories such as televisions could increasingly see consumers turn to LLMs for discovery and comparison.
For example, instead of manually searching for a television and comparing multiple listings, consumers could ask an LLM to compare two products and receive recommendations or links to purchase.
This shift also adds another layer to the playbook’s focus on behavioural proof. As consumers increasingly use AI interfaces to shortlist products, the signals generated through their discovery and consideration journeys could become another
Partnerships could influence discovery, but relevance remains key
The growing role of LLMs also raises questions about whether partnerships between AI platforms and brands could influence which products consumers see.
Responding to concerns that brands without partnerships with an AI platform could be disadvantaged in product discovery, Taneja said the technology is still evolving and current partnerships are limited.
She expects LLMs to increasingly learn from consumer behaviour and broader data, alongside commercial partnerships.
Taneja compared this with e-commerce search algorithms, where paid placements exist alongside organic rankings.
“You can’t buy the first 50 slots on Amazon. You can’t,” she said.
According to her, platforms ultimately have to maintain consumer relevance because excessive commercial bias could result in users reducing their engagement or moving elsewhere.
“They cannot lose consumer relevance,” she said.
Taneja said this consumer relevance will remain important as LLMs evolve, with platforms able to measure changes in user engagement, time spent and frequency of usage.
‘Best practices around ads on LLMs are still not on display’
While marketers are increasingly exploring advertising and partnerships within generative AI environments, Taneja said the industry has not yet arrived at a defined operating model for the channel.
“There is excitement, there are partnerships, a lot of best and learns, there are pilots, there are learnings,” she said.
However, she added that brands and LLM platforms still need to establish what works, what does not, how ROI should be measured and what the operating model around the channel should look like.
According to Taneja, it will take time for the ecosystem to reach a stage where brands can establish repeatable best practices for advertising and commerce within LLM environments.
“The writing is on the ball. It will come across,” she said.
E-commerce becomes an innovation engine
Taneja’s comments on LLMs come against the backdrop of a broader change in the role of e-commerce platforms.
WPP Media’s playbook describes e-commerce as an “innovation engine”, with online platforms increasingly serving as environments where brands can discover demand, test propositions and learn from real shopper behaviour.
Taneja said commerce platforms have evolved from being primarily transaction-led, discount-driven destinations into spaces for brand building, product development and identifying new market opportunities.
She contrasted today’s commerce environment with the e-commerce market around 2015, when platforms were heavily associated with steep discounts, free delivery and price-led promotions.
Today, commerce platforms provide brands with search signals, transaction signals, consumer feedback and competitor intelligence, allowing them to identify emerging opportunities and test products.
“Intelligence is in abundance,” she said.
Brands can also use commerce platforms as testing grounds for pricing and positioning. A product can be tested at Rs 80, Rs 100 or Rs 120, for instance, with brands able to track sales, reviews, searches and the impact of paid visibility against organic performance.
This allows brands to test propositions and gather learnings faster than through traditional retail distribution, Taneja said.
Non-metro India becomes central to digital launches
The report also highlights the growing importance of non-metro India in the next phase of e-retail growth.
Tier-II cities and beyond contributed around 65% of new e-retail shoppers acquired during 2024-25, according to the playbook. This makes non-metro markets increasingly important for identifying high-potential consumer cohorts and pin codes before brands commit to wider distribution.
Taneja had similarly highlighted the emergence of tier-II and tier-III consumers during the discussion, particularly as the growth of online shopping brings more vernacular audiences into e-commerce.
She said the shift is significant because many of these consumers are moving into digital commerce even as platforms continue to evolve in terms of their language and content offerings.
The report argues that brands therefore need to identify where demand is emerging before committing to broad distribution, rather than treating national expansion as the starting point.
Quick commerce compresses trial and learning
Quick commerce is another part of this changing commerce landscape.
According to WPP Media’s playbook, quick commerce accounted for 16-17% of India’s e-commerce GMV in 2025. The report, citing Bain & Company and Flipkart, projects quick commerce to contribute 45-50% of incremental e-retail GMV through 2030.
The report identifies 10-to-20-minute delivery as a mechanism that can compress both trial and learning cycles, particularly for impulse-led purchases.
This reinforces the broader argument that commerce platforms can function as live testing environments, allowing brands to observe consumer response and refine their propositions before scaling.
Taneja also pointed to commerce platforms as spaces where brands can experiment with pricing, visibility, product propositions and consumer response without waiting for the longer cycles associated with traditional retail.
Digital proof before omnichannel scale
Despite the growing importance of digital commerce, Taneja said brands cannot treat e-commerce as the endpoint.
WPP Media’s playbook notes that around 90% of Indian retail remains offline, making omnichannel expansion critical for brands seeking larger-scale penetration.
The report argues that digital demand validation should serve as the proof layer before brands expand into general trade, modern trade and specialised retail.
Taneja said e-commerce currently accounts for only around 10-11% of commerce in India, depending on the need an offline presence
“For a brand to sort of do an ARR of about Rs 50 to 100 crore is pretty okay if you do everything right. But beyond that, you have to go offline,” she said.
According to her, digital commerce can therefore help brands determine where demand exists, what consumers are willing to pay and which products have the potential to scale before they make larger offline investments.
Six shelves define the wider commerce journey
Taneja said the rise of LLMs reinforces why brands need to view commerce as a broader ecosystem rather than equating it with e-commerce marketplaces.
She pointed to WPP Global’s “six shelves” framework, under which different channels perform different jobs across discovery, intent, purchase and fulfilment.
The playbook similarly argues that every channel has a specific role, requiring brands to build a deliberate launch architecture across D2C, marketplaces, quick commerce, retail media and creators.
The same consumer could discover a product through an LLM, encounter it on social media, search for it on Google, see it on an e-commerce platform and ultimately purchase it from a physical store.
“The consumer journey is not linear anymore. It’s very complicated now,” Taneja said.
She said brands therefore cannot view investment in one channel as necessarily coming at the expense of another.
“Gone are the days that I’m going to spend on Amazon and I’m not going to spend on Google or social platforms. It’s not like that,” she said.
The playbook’s broader proposition is that brands need to connect these different touchpoints rather than optimise each channel in isolation. For Taneja, the emergence of LLM-led discovery adds another shelf to an already fragmented consumer journey, making the ability to understand where consumers discover, evaluate and ultimately purchase products increasingly important.
As LLMs develop, the challenge for marketers will be to establish how AI-led discovery translates into measurable commerce outcomes, while continuing to use digital platforms as testing and validation environments before taking proven demand into broader omnichannel distribution.
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First Published onOctober 1, 2026, 12:11:43 IST
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