Parents are extending more trust to artificial intelligence shopping agents than any other consumer group, according to research Zeta Global published today. The AI Marketing Cloud company, listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker ZETA, surveyed 2,000 U.S. adults who reported using AI to make a purchase within the past three months, finding that consumers with children under 18 lead nearly every measure of comfort with delegating shopping decisions to automated systems.

Parents with children under 18 are more willing than non-parents to let AI agents spend within a set budget, reorder household goods automatically, and recommend brands they would not otherwise have found, according to new survey data from Zeta Global released today.

The findings mark the second installment in what the company calls its AI shopping insights series, following a study conducted in late 2025. That earlier research, covered by PPC Land, found that 83% of weekly AI users planned to rely on the technology for 2025 holiday gift decisions. The new survey, conducted online in May 2026, suggests that trend has continued to build in the months since, with authorization for autonomous AI action now emerging as a distinct behavior alongside simple product discovery.

Survey Methodology and Scope

Zeta Global commissioned the research among 2,000 U.S. adults who reported using AI to make a purchase within the past three months. The fieldwork ran in May 2026. Respondents were not selected at random from the general population; the sample was restricted to people who had already used AI in a shopping context, meaning the findings describe the behavior of an AI-adopting subset of consumers rather than the population as a whole. That distinction matters for how the percentages should be read. A figure showing that 43% of parents would authorize AI to spend within a budget applies to parents who already use AI for shopping, not to all parents.

David A. Steinberg, Co-Founder, Chairman, and CEO of Zeta Global, framed the finding as an indicator of broader consumer sentiment. "There's no question consumers are increasingly trusting AI with shopping decisions. The more important question now is whether brands are positioned to be discovered, recommended, and ultimately selected by AI," Steinberg said in the announcement. He added that the company's generative engine optimization tool, which Zeta calls GEO, "gives marketers that visibility while helping optimize the context that drives discovery and recommendations."

What Changed Between the Two Studies

Pamela Lord, President of Customer Relationship Management at Zeta Global, drew a direct line between the two surveys and what she described as a behavioral progression. "When we conducted our first AI shopping study in late 2025, consumers were beginning to invite AI into their purchasing decisions," Lord said. "Just a few months later, we're seeing signs that invitation is evolving into authorization. Consumers are becoming more likely to allow AI to take action on their behalf. As AI becomes a more influential layer in the purchase journey, brands need to understand how they show up in AI-driven recommendations and create experiences that are useful enough to earn the next click."

That distinction between invitation and authorization is the central argument of the release. Inviting AI into a decision means asking it for suggestions, comparisons, or research; authorizing it means granting permission to spend money without a final human click. Zeta's data suggests the second behavior, while still a minority pattern, has moved from theoretical to measurable within a matter of months.

The Parent Gap Across Every Measured Category

The survey isolated four specific behaviors and found that parents scored higher than non-parents in every instance:

  • 43% of parents would allow AI to make purchases on their behalf within a set budget, compared with 27% of non-parents.
  • 43% of parents would let AI automatically reorder household essentials, compared with 31% of non-parents.
  • 74% of parents say AI helped them discover a new brand they otherwise would not have considered, compared with 66% of non-parents.
  • 60% of parents would choose a brand's personalized AI experience over a general-purpose AI tool, compared with 49% of non-parents.

The gaps range from roughly 9 to 16 percentage points, and they hold consistently across categories as different as budget-constrained spending and reorder automation. Household replenishment, such as restocking paper goods or pantry staples, and brand discovery are functionally different tasks; one is repetitive and low-stakes, the other involves evaluating something new. Parents scored higher on both, which suggests the trust gap is not confined to a single type of shopping decision.

Zeta's release does not offer a specific explanation for why parents show this pattern, though the framing throughout the announcement treats time scarcity as an implicit driver. Parents managing households and children may have less time available for comparison shopping, which could make delegation to an automated system more appealing regardless of the category involved. That interpretation is not stated as fact in the source material and should be treated as a plausible reading rather than a confirmed finding.

Discovery Moves Ahead of Transactions

A separate section of the research addresses where in the purchase journey AI is having its most immediate effect. According to Zeta Global, agentic commerce may be reshaping how consumers discover and evaluate brands well before it changes where the actual transaction occurs. The data shows that even as comfort with AI-assisted decision-making increases, the final purchase still tends to happen through familiar channels.

Seventy percent of AI shoppers surveyed said they prefer completing a purchase directly on a brand's own website rather than buying through an AI system. Zeta's framing describes this as AI occupying a discovery and decision-support role while the transaction itself continues to flow through brand-owned channels, rather than displacing them entirely. That reading is broadly consistent with data PPC Land has covered elsewhere regarding checkout infrastructure such as the Universal Commerce Protocol, where public adoption numbers have remained limited even as AI-assisted product discovery has expanded.

The survey also found that consumers have a clear preference for AI experiences built by the brand itself over general-purpose AI tools. Fifty-four percent of AI shoppers overall said they would choose a brand's personalized AI experience over a general-purpose alternative, and that figure climbs to 58% among consumers between the ages of 18 and 45. Read alongside the parent-versus-non-parent gap on the same metric, the pattern suggests that brand-specific AI tools carry a trust advantage across multiple demographic cuts, not only among parents.

Broader Shifts in Shopping Behavior

Beyond the parent-focused findings, the survey documented changes across the full consumer base that use AI for shopping. Thirty-six percent of AI shoppers said they now spend less time researching purchases, a figure that speaks directly to the efficiency argument that vendors of AI shopping tools have made since generative AI systems became widely available. Only 21% said they spend more money because of AI, a finding that runs somewhat against the assumption that AI-assisted shopping necessarily drives higher spending through impulse purchases or algorithmic upselling.

Two additional figures point toward changes in post-purchase behavior and channel preference. Fifty-nine percent of respondents said AI has reduced the likelihood that they will return a purchase, which would represent a meaningful operational benefit for retailers if the pattern holds at scale, since returns processing carries real cost for e-commerce operations. Separately, 29% said AI has made them less likely to shop in-store, a figure that, while representing a minority of respondents, still signals a channel shift worth monitoring for retailers with substantial physical footprints.

None of these four figures were broken out by parent status in the material Zeta released, so it is not possible to say whether parents also lead in these broader behavioral categories or whether the pattern is specific to authorization and discovery.

Category and Demographic Variation

The survey further examined which product categories draw the most AI-assisted shopping activity, and the results diverge sharply by gender. Electronics ranked as the leading category overall, with 33% of AI shoppers naming it their top category for AI-assisted shopping. That figure rises substantially among men, to 45%, indicating that electronics purchases are disproportionately driving AI adoption within that demographic specifically.

Among women, beauty products emerged as the most common AI shopping category, cited by 20% of female respondents, compared with just 4% of men. That 16-point gap is among the largest demographic splits in the entire dataset, larger than any of the parent-versus-non-parent gaps reported elsewhere in the survey. Household items ranked second overall at 21%, and clothing, jewelry, and accessories ranked third at 15%.

Taken together, the category data suggests that AI shopping adoption is not evenly distributed across product types or demographics. Electronics and household items skew toward broader adoption, while beauty products show a pronounced gender concentration that marketers in that vertical may need to account for when building AI-facing content or brand experiences.

Context Within the Broader Agentic Commerce Debate

Zeta's findings arrive amid a wider industry conversation about whether agentic commerce, the practice of AI systems completing purchases with reduced or no human involvement, is a durable behavioral shift or an overstated one. Skepticism about the category has been documented since at least October 2025, when independent analyst Andrew Lipsman published an analysis questioning agentic commerce viability on structural grounds, including retailer incentives against AI intermediation and evidence that consumers still prefer to see options before committing to a purchase.

That skepticism has since been tested against real deployment data. Walmart, which served as a launch partner for OpenAI's Instant Checkout feature within ChatGPT, later disclosed to WIRED that conversion rates for products sold directly inside the chatbot ran three times lower than for products requiring a click-out to Walmart's own website, according to PPC Land's coverage of that disclosure. The gap suggests that even where agentic checkout infrastructure exists and functions, consumer behavior has not caught up to the friction-free transaction model that platform companies have proposed. Zeta's own data, showing 70% of AI shoppers preferring direct purchase through a brand's website, is directionally consistent with that pattern: the preference for a familiar, brand-controlled checkout experience appears to be persistent rather than a temporary transitional artifact.

Separately, adoption of the technical infrastructure meant to enable agentic transactions has also lagged public expectations. A study from Originality.ai, covered by PPC Land, found only 26 public implementations of Google's Universal Commerce Protocol across more than three million websites scanned, four months after the protocol's launch. None of the major companies that co-developed or endorsed the standard had visibly implemented it at the time of that reporting. Zeta's survey does not address infrastructure adoption directly, but the combination of the two datasets suggests a gap between consumer willingness to delegate shopping decisions and the technical readiness of the broader commerce ecosystem to support fully autonomous transactions.

McKinsey has projected that agentic commerce could orchestrate between $900 billion and $1 trillion in revenue within the United States business-to-consumer retail market alone by 2030, with global projections reaching between $3 trillion and $5 trillion, a figure cited in PPC Land's coverage of a Boston Consulting Group and Moloco study published in January 2026. That same BCG and Moloco research found that 45% of consumers said they felt comfortable letting AI make purchases on their behalf, a figure in a similar range to the 43% of parents Zeta found willing to let AI spend within a set budget, though the two surveys used different populations, question framing, and measurement periods, so a direct comparison should be treated cautiously.

Zeta's Position in the AI Marketing Landscape

The research release is consistent with a pattern of AI product and data announcements Zeta Global has made over roughly the past 18 months. The company introduced its AI Agent Studio with agentic workflows in March 2025, giving marketing teams the ability to orchestrate interconnected AI agents for tasks such as programmatic media optimization and customer journey management. In September 2025, Zeta launched its generative engine optimization solution, positioning the tool as a direct response to declining traditional search query volume as consumers shift toward AI-generated answers.

That same month, Zeta also announced a definitive agreement to acquire Marigold's enterprise business for up to $325 million, adding loyalty and retention capabilities serving more than 100 global enterprise brands. The acquisition followed Zeta's earlier purchase of LiveIntent for $250 million in October 2024, a deal that expanded the company's identity resolution capabilities through an identity graph processing more than 235 million unique hashed email addresses monthly, according to PPC Land's reporting at the time.

Most recently, Zeta Global and Palantir Technologies announced a strategic partnership on June 23, 2026, to rebuild enterprise AI infrastructure by rearchitecting Zeta's Data Cloud on Palantir's Foundry platform, a deal Steinberg said could drive more than $100 million in annual revenue to Zeta in the coming years, according to PPC Land's coverage of the announcement made at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. Viewed against that sequence, the agentic commerce research published today functions as supporting evidence for the strategic direction Zeta has pursued through its product launches and acquisitions: a bet that consumer trust in AI-mediated shopping will continue to grow, and that marketing infrastructure built around identity, data, and generative engine visibility will be positioned to capture that shift.

Limitations of the Research

Several caveats apply to how the findings should be interpreted. The sample of 2,000 U.S. adults was drawn specifically from people who had already used AI to make a purchase in the prior three months, meaning the results describe an AI-adopting population rather than the broader public. The survey was conducted online, which can introduce its own selection effects regarding who participates. Zeta Global, as the commissioning party, has a commercial interest in demonstrating growing consumer trust in AI-mediated commerce, since the company sells marketing technology built around that premise; the survey should be read as company-commissioned research rather than independent academic study.

The release also does not specify confidence intervals, margins of error, or the exact wording of the survey questions used to generate the percentages cited. Without that detail, it is not possible to assess how sensitive the reported figures might be to how the questions were phrased, a factor that can meaningfully affect survey results on topics involving hypothetical future behavior, such as willingness to authorize an AI agent to spend money.

Why This Matters for Marketers

For marketing professionals, the practical implication of Zeta's research centers on the distinction Lord drew between invitation and authorization. If consumers are increasingly willing to let AI systems take action rather than simply offer suggestions, brands face a shift in where and how they need to be visible. Being discoverable to a human browsing a search engine and being discoverable to an AI system generating a recommendation are not the same task, and the skill sets, content structures, and measurement approaches involved differ substantially.

The category-level findings, particularly the pronounced electronics skew among men and the beauty product skew among women, suggest that any brand strategy responding to this research should account for category-specific patterns rather than treating AI shopping adoption as uniform. A beauty brand and a consumer electronics brand are, according to this data, encountering AI-mediated shopping behavior from meaningfully different demographic bases.

The persistence of the 70% preference for direct brand-website purchase, set against growing comfort with AI-assisted discovery, also points to a specific strategic tension. Brands may need to invest in being well-represented within AI discovery and recommendation systems while simultaneously ensuring their own websites remain the preferred final destination for completing a purchase. That combination, rather than a wholesale shift toward AI-mediated checkout, is what the current data suggests marketers should plan around, at least based on the behavior documented in this survey as of May 2026.

Timeline

  • October 2024: Zeta Global agrees to acquire LiveIntent for $250 million, expanding its identity resolution capabilities.
  • March 27, 2025: Zeta Global introduces AI Agent Studio with agentic workflows for marketing automation.
  • September 17, 2025: Zeta Global launches its generative engine optimization solution.
  • September 30, 2025: Zeta Global announces a definitive agreement to acquire Marigold's enterprise business for up to $325 million.
  • Late 2025: Zeta Global conducts its first AI shopping insights study.
  • October 28, 2025: Zeta Global releases findings from its first AI shopping study, showing 83% of weekly AI users planned to rely on AI for 2025 holiday shopping.
  • March 24, 2026: Zeta Global announces general availability of Athena by Zeta to all Zeta Marketing Platform customers.
  • May 2026: Zeta Global conducts the second installment of its AI shopping insights survey among 2,000 U.S. adults.
  • June 23, 2026: Zeta Global and Palantir Technologies announce a strategic infrastructure partnership at Cannes Lions.
  • June 30, 2026: Zeta Global publishes the second AI shopping insights study, highlighting parents as early leaders in agentic commerce adoption.

Summary

Who: Zeta Global (NYSE: ZETA), an AI Marketing Cloud company founded in 2007 by David A. Steinberg and John Sculley and headquartered in New York City, conducted and published the research. Respondents were 2,000 U.S. adults who had used AI to make a purchase within the prior three months.

What: Zeta Global released the second installment of its AI shopping insights series, finding that parents with children under 18 show higher willingness than non-parents to authorize AI agents to shop on their behalf, spanning budgeted purchases, automatic household reordering, brand discovery, and preference for brand-specific AI experiences over general-purpose tools.

When: The survey was conducted online in May 2026. Zeta Global published the findings today, June 30, 2026.

Where: The research covers United States consumers. Zeta Global is headquartered in New York City.

Why: The findings matter because they document a specific, measurable behavioral gap between parents and non-parents in willingness to delegate shopping authority to AI systems, at a moment when the broader agentic commerce industry is testing whether consumer trust matches the technical infrastructure being built to support autonomous transactions. The data arrives alongside other reporting showing mixed real-world results for AI-mediated checkout, suggesting that discovery and recommendation, rather than full transaction handoff, represent the more immediate area of consumer comfort with AI shopping tools.