Nearly half of consumers surveyed across four major Western markets would choose a free, advertising-influenced AI shopping assistant over paying for fully impartial recommendations, according to new research from payments consultancy PSE Consulting.
The study, which surveyed 4,250 adults in the UK, US, France and Germany who already use AI for online shopping, found that 43% would accept a free AI shopping assistant even if its recommendations were shaped by advertising. By comparison, 27% said they would prefer to pay for a fully impartial alternative.
The findings point to a pattern familiar from the early adoption of search engines and social media: consumers appear willing to trade recommendation neutrality for free access, and to factor commercial influence into how they evaluate advice.
Trust Remains a Constraint
Acceptance of advertising in AI commerce does not translate into unconditional trust. Four in ten respondents (40%) said that advertising would reduce their trust in AI-generated recommendations. That figure rises to 48% among UK consumers.
Sensitivity increases with age. Half of consumers aged 55 and over said advertising would reduce their trust in AI recommendations, compared with around a third of those under 35. The US stands out as the market most open to paying for quality, with 34% of American respondents saying they would pay for a fully impartial AI shopping assistant. That’s the highest share among the four markets surveyed.
Chris Jones, Managing Director at PSE Consulting, said the results reflect a more layered commercial picture than a simple binary between free and paid models.
“Consumers are carrying forward a long-standing digital bargain from search and social media into the AI era. They are not rejecting commercially influenced services — they are comfortable with them — but they are far more sensitive to how that influence affects the usefulness of recommendations.”
Jones also flagged a longer-term risk for the sector. “The real risk is that, without careful design, these dynamics could follow the same pattern of gradual degradation in user experience that has become associated with platform ‘enshittification’.”
Critics often use the concept of “enshittification” to discuss the negative evolution of major social media and e-commerce platforms. E.g. At first, any platform offers excellent value to attract users. Once it grows, and a loyal user ecosystem is well-built, many platforms start to monetize those ecosystems more aggressively. Therefore, the customers, partners and businesses already dependent on them face higher fees, more ads amidst genuine non-sponsored content, and decline of organic reach for creators.
What This Means for Merchants and Marketers
The research has direct implications for how brands and retailers approach AI-driven commerce channels. As agentic AI moves from discovery into active purchase decisions, product visibility within AI recommendation layers is set to become a commercial priority in its own right.
PSE Consulting notes that for merchants and platforms, the challenge extends beyond consumer-facing visibility. As AI systems become the primary interface for product discovery, enterprises will face pressure to ensure their products are accurately interpreted, correctly prioritised and consistently represented within AI recommendation environments. In effect, trust becomes something engineered and paid for at the infrastructure level, not only experienced by the end consumer.
The consultancy expects the market to develop along tiered lines: free, ad-supported tools driving mainstream adoption with sponsored placements becoming a normalised feature, alongside premium or enterprise-facing models offering fully agnostic recommendations. At the same time, it is worth noticing that any recommendation system drawing on commercial data sources carries some form of bias, whether from ad placement, catalogue completeness, or how products are listed.
Therefore, the pattern existing today would surely remain in place for many years to come. Today, only 14% of e-commerce consumers in the UK, US, France and Germany blindly rely on the AI engine’s best choice, while the majority factor in price and brand integrity during the decision-making process.
The research is part of a broader PSE Consulting study into the commercial and structural implications of agentic commerce across four Western e-commerce markets. A full report is forthcoming.
