Zalando's CTO says AI agents bring under 1% of its traffic

AI shopping agents bring Zalando less than 1% of its traffic, its chief technology officer, Graeme Smith, said at Web Summit in Lisbon on Thursday. “We see less than 1% agentic traffic, and sales through agents,” he said, before describing those sales as “tiny, tiny”.Web Summit Lisbon 2026, Stage 4 livestream (Day Three). He said the channel will grow but is small today. Smith spoke on Stage 4 in a session titled Surviving and thriving in the age of agentic commerce.

Zalando does not publish either number, so both rest on Smith’s word. He did not say how Zalando counts agent traffic. He also said more than 70% of Zalando’s traffic is organic, meaning shoppers come to it directly, and that the company works hard to keep it that way.

The size behind those percentages is on the record. Zalando reported 63.2 million active customers in its third-quarter results on 3 November.Zalando: Zalando grows profitably in Q3, driven by very strong B2B expansion, and continues innovating through AI…. Its gross merchandise volume was 17.6 billion euros in 2025,Zalando: Zalando delivers strong 2025 results, expects further acceleration in 2026 through scaling AI innovations…. and it says it works with more than 7,000 brands across 29 markets. Smith gave the same figures on stage.

No agent is blocked

Smith said Zalando does not block any AI agent today, only aggressive scrapers. That puts it on the other side of the line from eBay, whose chief executive said traffic from AI agents and assistants “is very, very small today,” as we reported on 11 November, and which appears to have shut agents out.The S-Curve, Why eBay may not want to be an AI agent’s catalogue, 11 November 2026.

Zalando is also working with the agent companies. It is one of two European launch partners for Google’s Universal Commerce Protocol, which lets customers buy through AI chatbots such as Gemini. Smith said Zalando tested advertising in ChatGPT in the UK and is reviewing the results.

He doubts many shoppers will check out inside an agent when buying clothes. Zalando’s data shows that shoppers who click through from an agent “tend not to buy the item that the channel or the agent” found, he said; they look at three or four more items and buy one of those instead. Counting agent purchases is hard in any case: Yuno’s chief executive said there is no clear way to measure them because agents try to pass as human, as we reported on 10 November.The S-Curve, Yuno’s CEO says his AI agent still pays with a raw card number, 10 November 2026.

Zalando’s own agent

Zalando wants shoppers to use its agent instead. The Zalando Assistant, first introduced in spring 2023,Zalando: From conversational tool to a lifestyle agent: how the Zalando Assistant has grown up. had more than 22 million unique users in 2026, the company said in its third-quarter release. Smith said over 13 million used it in the last quarter, and that customers who use it in a session are “more than twice as likely to make a purchase”.

The newest piece runs the other way. Zalando Extended, announced with the third-quarter results, adds products from other online shops that Zalando does not sell itself. Zalando’s own AI agent will buy them for customers inside the Zalando app, and partner shops can buy ads through Zalando’s retail media business. The first pilot partner is the home and living retailer Westwing, and agent checkout starts in 2027. Smith said Westwing sells bulky furniture that Zalando’s own infrastructure is not set up to ship.

A small number against a big forecast

Zalando’s own March results release called agentic commerce a channel “projected to capture up to 15% of all online retail by 2030,” without naming the source of that projection. It also says Zalando is already the fashion platform that conversational AIs refer to most. Smith’s figure puts the channel at less than 1% of Zalando’s traffic today.

Agent-referred traffic is growing fast from a small base. Adobe Digital Insights, which tracks US retail sites, said the share of retail visits driven by AI grew 62% year on year in July.Adobe Digital Insights, AI Traffic Trends Report, August 2026. It said those AI visitors convert at a 60% higher rate than other traffic.