Published on: July 22, 2026
A new study by WARC in partnership with PHD forecasts that global consumer spending facilitated by agentic AI will reach $3.35 trillion by 2030, highlighting how AI agents are rapidly transforming the way consumers discover, evaluate and purchase products.
The report, From Abundance to Agents: How the Delegation of Choice is Transforming Marketing, estimates that AI agent-facilitated consumer spending will grow from $944 billion in 2026 to $3.35 trillion by 2030, increasing its share of global household expenditure from 1.3% this year to 3.8% by the end of the decade.
According to the research, while consumers will continue making most purchase decisions themselves, AI agents will increasingly influence product discovery, comparisons, recommendations and routine purchasing decisions, fundamentally reshaping the customer journey.
The report identifies the United States as the largest market for consumer spending influenced by agentic AI by 2030.
The projected top markets include:
Collectively, the top ten global markets are expected to account for 67.9% of worldwide agentic AI consumer spending by 2030.
The study finds that AI agents will have varying levels of impact across industries, depending on purchase frequency, transaction complexity, available consumer data and buying behaviour.
Among the categories expected to see the strongest growth are:
Projected to become the largest category for AI-driven transactions, agent-facilitated consumer spending is expected to increase 611.9%, from $57.6 billion in 2026 to $410.3 billion by 2030.
Agent-assisted financial decisions are forecast to grow 235.3%, reaching $237.9 billion by 2030 as AI increasingly supports consumers through complex financial choices.
Travel will remain one of the earliest adopters of agentic AI, with AI-assisted spending expected to increase from $78.1 billion in 2026 to $275.6 billion by 2030, driven by AI-powered discovery, planning and booking experiences.
To help marketers understand how AI agents will reshape purchasing behaviour, PHD has introduced the Four Modes Framework.
The framework outlines four different ways AI will influence marketing:
AI autonomously manages repetitive, data-rich purchasing journeys where consumers delegate the entire buying process.
AI assists consumers by recommending products, comparing options and simplifying purchase decisions.
High-value and trust-sensitive purchases—including automobiles, electronics and healthcare—will continue to rely heavily on direct brand influence.
Social influence, creators and communities will remain highly influential in categories such as fashion, beauty and cosmetics, where peer recommendations continue driving decisions.
The report concludes that brands must increasingly optimise their presence not only for human consumers but also for AI systems making recommendations on consumers’ behalf.
It highlights three priorities for marketers:
Rather than replacing brand building, the report argues that AI agents will place even greater emphasis on strong brand equity, trusted information and structured digital content.
Commenting on the findings, Rohan Tambyrajah, Worldwide Chief Strategy Officer, PHD, said:
“This research brings category level empiricism to the open-ended industry conversation about the growth opportunity with consumer facing AI and Agentic AI. It underscores the need for brands to design for both meaning and machine logic, and through Four Modes Framework offers marketers practical guidance on how best to implement against a category-level business case.”
James McDonald, Director of Data, Intelligence & Forecasting at WARC, added:
“This landmark study finds that agentic AI is already facilitating the path to purchase for many consumers, and will become deeply embedded over the coming years to influence $3.35trn in household expenditure by 2030.”
He further noted:
“This is true not just in high-frequency categories such as travel, CPG, and utilities, but increasingly more so in sectors that have traditionally leveraged brand marketing as a core strategy. By mapping adoption across product sectors, markets and media, our research ensures practitioners are not caught flat-footed as they approach the new frontier.”
