Agentic AI-facilitated spending to hit USD $3.35tn by 2030

Research published by WARC and PHD forecasts that global consumer spending facilitated by agentic AI will reach USD $3.35 trillion in 2030, equal to 3.8% of global consumer spending.

The report examines how AI agents are beginning to mediate parts of the customer journey, from discovery and comparison to booking and repeat purchasing, as consumers delegate more routine and complex decisions to software tools. Agent-facilitated spending is forecast to rise from USD $944 billion this year, or 1.3% of global consumer spending, to more than three times that level by the end of the decade.

The analysis covers 10 markets - Australia, Brazil, China, France, Germany, India, Mexico, South Korea, the UK and the US - which together are expected to account for 67.9% of global consumer agentic AI spending in 2030. The US alone is forecast to represent 31.9% of the total, or USD $1.1 trillion, while China is projected to reach USD $505.8 billion and the UK USD $131.2 billion.

The findings point to an uneven shift across industries, with some sectors more exposed to delegated purchasing than others. Telecoms and utilities, financial services, and travel and transport are expected to be among the earliest areas where transactions move further towards agent-to-agent interaction.

Category split

In telecoms and utilities, agent-facilitated consumer spending is forecast to rise 611.9%, from USD $57.6 billion in 2026 to USD $410.3 billion in 2030. The report identifies billing cycles, dense product information and price comparison as factors that make the category more open to automated choice.

Financial services is projected to reach USD $237.9 billion in agent-facilitated spending by 2030, up 235.3%, as consumers use AI support for decisions that remain too sensitive to hand over fully but too complicated to manage without assistance. In travel and transport, spending influenced by AI agents is forecast to rise from USD $78.1 billion in 2026 to USD $275.6 billion in 2030, as consumers use software for discovery, itinerary planning and bookings.

Other sectors expected to see notable growth include food, media and publishing, retail, soft drinks and alcoholic drinks. In food, agents are expected to influence USD $78.1 billion of spending in 2026 and USD $292.8 billion by 2030. In media and publishing, that figure is forecast to increase from USD $73.3 billion to USD $367.8 billion over the same period.

Not every category is expected to be reshaped in the same way. High-value and infrequent purchases such as automobiles and electronics, as well as privacy-sensitive areas such as pharma and healthcare, leave less room for fully AI-led transactions. Areas such as clothing, accessories, toiletries and cosmetics are expected to remain more influenced by peers, creators and other consumer-to-consumer signals.

Marketing shift

To frame those differences, PHD set out what it calls the Four Modes Framework, intended to describe where marketing must adapt as brands try to influence not only people but also machine intermediaries. The framework spans agent-to-agent, agent-to-consumer, brand-to-consumer and consumer-to-consumer interactions.

All four modes are expected to coexist, with their relative importance varying by product category, purchase occasion and stage of the customer journey. The report also argues that brand advertising and brand equity will remain important even as software agents take a larger role in narrowing options and completing purchases.

The methodology uses data provided by Acxiom and a weighted index based on factors including decision complexity, transaction value, purchase frequency, data availability, media mix and market regulation. The aim was to estimate how much consumers will spend through AI channels in 2026 and 2030.

Rohan Tambyrajah, Worldwide Chief Strategy Officer, PHD, outlined how marketers should respond. "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," Tambyrajah said.

James McDonald, Director of Data, Intelligence & Forecasting, WARC, said the study suggests AI agents are already influencing household spending. "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.

"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," McDonald said.