AI Agents Reshaping Google Ads as NewCore Raises $66M for Agent Identity
The Development
Two developments published June 15 signal that agentic commerce has moved from concept to infrastructure problem. AI agents are now completing end-to-end purchase journeys on behalf of consumers, which transforms how Google Ads functions: product feeds that once drove clicks now operate as bidding signals evaluated by machines, not browsers. Simultaneously, enterprise security startup NewCore emerged with $66M in funding to tackle the identity layer this shift requires — arguing that managing AI agent credentials and permissions is the next frontier in enterprise security, supplanting the traditional focus on human employee access. Together, the developments mark a structural inflection: the buyer in paid search is increasingly non-human.
Our Take
Performance marketing has always assumed a human on the other end of the click. That assumption is breaking. When an AI agent shops for a user, it does not respond to creative, emotional triggers, or brand salience — it parses structured data, price, availability, and reputation signals. Google Ads product feeds, originally a retail merchandising tool, become the primary advertising interface for agent-mediated commerce. This is not a distant scenario: the infrastructure to verify and permission those agents, which NewCore is now funded to build, is being constructed now. Brands that have invested heavily in feed quality, pricing logic, and structured data governance are already better positioned than those optimising click-through rates on display assets.
What Changed
Brands can now be purchased by an agent evaluating structured feed data against user-defined criteria, with no human ever seeing an ad. The advertising surface has bifurcated: one optimised for human attention, one for machine evaluation — and the machine path is accelerating.
Marketing Impact
Ecommerce and performance marketing teams face the most immediate disruption. Feed quality, pricing competitiveness, and structured data completeness now function as the creative and targeting layer for agent-driven transactions — displacing ad copy and audience segmentation as the primary levers.
Competitive Implication
Retailers with clean, complete, and competitively priced product feeds gain disproportionate visibility in agent-mediated searches. Performance agencies whose value proposition centres on creative optimisation and audience targeting face margin compression as those skills become less determinative in agent-evaluated environments.
Strategic Outlook
Google will accelerate product feed standards and agent-accessible inventory APIs. NewCore's raise signals that identity infrastructure for agents will attract significant capital through 2027 as enterprises demand auditable access controls. Expect dedicated agent-commerce ad formats from major platforms within the next two quarters.
The Exploit
Action Item
Heads of ecommerce should audit Google Merchant Center feed completeness and pricing accuracy this quarter — before agent-driven traffic scales — because feed data quality is now your most consequential ad asset.