Drip pricing lifted StubHub's revenue by 20%. Confirmshaming, false urgency, roach-motel cancellation flows. A meaningful slice of digital commerce runs on the gap between what consumers actually want and what they can be pressured into accepting.
Agents don't feel pressure. A countdown timer is just a number. Scarcity copy is just text.
We've seen a version of this before. Ad-blockers didn't kill the attention economy. They rerouted it into native ads, paywalls, and whitelisting deals. Agents suggest something broader: not filtering one channel but mediating entire transactions. Forrester expects one in five sellers to deploy counter-agents by year's end. The manipulation economy is already looking for its next surface.