OpenAI just introduced Instant Checkout and apps in ChatGPT, allowing customers to buy products and services directly within the AI. This is, as they say, “the next step in agentic commerce.” It’s genuinely a capital-B, capital-D, Big Frickin’ Deal. No doubt about it.

At the same time, some folks might be rushing to claim these a whole new world, or a complete upending of commerce as we know it.

I’m… not convinced. Instead, I’m concerned that too many people are going to trade the Big Tech intermediaries we face today with a different set of intermediaries. Yes, ChatGPT is giving us the tools to transact directly in their platform. That’s good. How we use them, though, and what they mean for our businesses is what our job is all about.

So, what is the meaning of Instant Checkout and ChatGPT apps? What is the right way to approach these tools? And, ultimately, how can you use them to benefit your business today… and in the longer term?

That’s what this episode of the podcast is all about.

Want to learn more? Here are the show notes for you.

Are ChatGPT’s Apps Good for Your Business? (Episode 471) — Headlines and Show Notes

Show Notes and Links

• Introducing apps in ChatGPT and the new Apps SDK | OpenAI
• Stripe powers Instant Checkout in ChatGPT and releases Agentic Commerce Protocol codeveloped with OpenAI
• ChatGPT apps are live: Here are the first ones you can try | The Verge
• Buy it in ChatGPT: Instant Checkout and the Agentic Commerce Protocol | OpenAI
• Agentic Commerce
• The Brand is the Prompt (Thinks Out Loud 465)
• AI Is Eating the World, But Who’s Paying for Dinner? (Thinks Out Loud 464)
• How Should You Think About Website SEO for AI? (Thinks Out Loud Episode 448)
• Will Agentic AI Kill Your Content Marketing? (Episode 470)
• The New SEO? (Episode 469)
• AI and Zero-Click Search: The Real Story (Episode 467)
• The Rise of Agentic AI Among Your Customers (Episode 466)
• The Biggest Risk to Your Business? Becoming a “Hidden Intermediary” (Thinks Out Loud 267)

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Transcript: Are ChatGPT’s Apps Good for Your Business? (Episode 471)

Welcome back to the show. I’m Tim Peter.

ChatGPT launched two new features this week that every marketer and e-commerce professional must know about. The first is Instant Checkout, which allows users to buy directly from Shopify and Etsy. They’ve also open-sourced their Agentic Commerce Protocol, that, as they say, "lets AI agents, people, and businesses work together to complete purchases." Very cool concept.

OpenAI built the protocol with Stripe and "leading merchant partners to be powerful, secure and easy to adopt." Notably, the company calls this the next step in agentic commerce. So maybe we’re going to start talking before too long about A-commerce — agent commerce or agentic commerce — and maybe less about E-commerce. Time will tell, but it’s definitely something I’m going to be watching.

The second big announcement is apps in ChatGPT, which is a way for users to connect directly with apps that they use regularly right within ChatGPT itself. You don’t have to leave your chat session. You can simply have the app, do things for you.

The idea is that you can have customers interact with your company via a ChatGPT app without ever leaving the ChatGPT experience. Some of the folks they’ve launched with our Spotify, Canva, Figma, Zillow, Expedia, Coursera, and Booking.com. They also state that Uber, DoorDash, Instacart, OpenTable, Target, Peloton, TripAdvisor, and others are coming.

I’m seeing a large number of thoughtful, well-considered articles and posts that talk about the meaning of these two innovations for your brand and business. I’m also seeing some unhinged recommendations that, you know, you must sell on ChatGPT today or risk losing your business to those that do. I mean, it’s not 100% wrong. There is some risk there.

But the recommendation as being the thing you absolutely have to do is a bit misguided. And part of the reason those recommendations are misguided relates to a recent interview that OpenAI CEO Sam Altman gave about where he sees apps and instant checkout going. And no discussion of these developments makes sense without taking those comments in his interview into consideration.

So what’s really going on here? What really matters to your business? And where should you get started?

This is episode 471 of The Big Show. Let’s dive in.

I want to start the discussion around apps in ChatGPT and Instant Checkout by pouring a little bit of cold water on the early hype. These tools are interesting, but they’re kind of just okay at the moment. You can absolutely, 100% see the vision of where OpenAI is headed, where ChatGPT is headed, and it’s conceptually very cool.

They’re also not the most intuitive to install or use for most people. My friend, Brad Brewer, said on LinkedIn that "they should have waited" and, this is pretty harsh, but I think it’s spot on, "This feels more like $500 million dollar vaporware." Another friend of mine, Michael Goldrich, stated that "they’re still pretty unusable… the squeeze isn’t worth the juice.""

In general, I agree.

Where I disagree — not with Michael and Brad — but with some of the other posts that I’ve seen and some of the other thoughts that I’ve seen, is about what the purpose of these apps truly is.

Put simply, Instant Checkout and apps in ChatGPT do not exist to help your business They exist to help ChatGPT’s business.

Don’t believe me? Well consider this Sam Altman was interviewed by Ben Thompson of Stritechery and he said two things that I think everybody needs to pay close attention to. The first and this is a quote

• As long as you let the merchant have the direct relationship with the consumer… it’s a better user experience, it’s better for the merchant.”
• The second thing he said was, “If we ever start doing anything that is not our best effort to get the user to the best answer, trust in ChatGPT… would fall precipitously.”

I’m going to say that one again because it’s really important. "If we," that is, ChatGPT, "ever start doing anything that is not our best effort to get the user to the best answer, trust in ChatGPT… would fall precipitously."

Now, I want you to think about it for a moment because both of those quotes cannot be true at once. And I can prove it. You can prove it. You can see it for yourself based on how various apps work.

I connected both the Expedia and Booking.com apps to my ChatGPT account. It’s not the most intuitive process, as I mentioned earlier, but I was able to do it. And then I asked ChatGPT to search potential travel dates for me.

While it churned on its answer, I wondered which app would it choose? After all, I’d installed both Expedia and Booking.com. Was it going to give preference to one over the other? Would it show me a comparison with rates that they each show to give me a sense of where I might get the better deal? I honestly couldn’t wait to find out.

And then its answer came back. And what it did was… neither.

When I asked ChatGPT to book a hotel that met my needs for a potential trip, it told me to book directly through the hotel’s website. It literally said "that’s often the best price and inventory.” It did this despite it being unable to pull prices from the hotel’s booking engine. It also gave me the property’s phone number if I’d rather call, which, I mean, as somebody who’s always encouraging hotels and other businesses to get customers to buy directly from you, woohoo! That’s a big win. Booking direct, buying from the source wins the day, at least for the moment in ChatGPT.

The problem as it happens, was that I made a mistake when I used ChatGPT’s Expedia app. On Expedia’s page announcing the app, they give a couple of different steps and step three says that I need to, "ask Expedia for a flight or place to stay. Example, Expedia find me hotels in New York for October 12th through 15th."

Again, the usability of these apps could have been a lot clearer. I didn’t understand that I had to tell ChatGPT which app to use by name. It wasn’t going to decide whether to use Booking.com or Expedia. I had to tell it which one I wanted.

I didn’t get the Expedia experience because I didn’t ask for Expedia by name. Yes, I can get a better Expedia experience — or a better Booking.com experience or a better hotel direct experience — if I ask for that app by name. But if I don’t, who knows what you’re going to get?

In short, as I’ve noted before, the brand is the prompt.

Otherwise, ChatGPT is going to do what it thinks it’s best every single time. Which goes back to Sam Altman’s interview. Notice that ChatGPT did its best to give me the best answer. Not Expedia’s best answer. Not Booking.com‘s best answer. ChatGPT’s best answer.

Remember, Altman said, "if we ever start doing anything that is not our best effort to get the user to the best answer, trust in ChatGPT would fall precipitously."

If you want to ensure customers work with you in ChatGPT, they have to ask for you by name, regardless of whether you have an app or Instant Checkout… or none of those tools. Otherwise, ChatGPT will make its best effort to get the user to what ChatGPT thinks is the best answer. They have to.

I’ve been talking about this for months and Altman outright admitted it in his interview. If LLMs don’t give customers great answers, "trust will fall precipitously."

So what does that mean for you? Does it mean that you should ignore Instant Checkout or apps on ChatGPT? No, definitely not. You should build services or partner with providers that make your products, your services, your prices, your inventory available to ChatGPT and other AI answer engines. It’s definitely a commerce channel that is coming.

If you want to take a look at this, Expedia, for example, has connected with perplexity as well as ChatGPT. Travel companies TripAdvisor and SelfBook — as well as other merchants and other verticals — have also integrated with Perplexity too. And I suspect we’re going to see a lot more of this across the board.

But if everyone’s got an Instant Checkout integration or a ChatGPT app, your advantage will disappear. If these tools take off, that’s inevitable. Just like if you have an app on somebody’s phone, they have a lot of apps to choose from. Most apps never get opened.

What will ChatGPT do then? Well, they’ll do what’s best for customers. And more precisely, they’ll do what’s best for their business.

This is going to become more important over time as agentic commerce and agentic AI start to pick up. If your customers aren’t asking for you by name — if your customers are explicitly and implicitly training their agents that you are the brand that they want every time — you’re at the mercy of ChatGPT or Gemini or Perplexity or Claude or whatever other agents start to win in the marketplace. That is a guarantee.

And that’s why, regardless of whether you incorporate these tools into your business’s marketing and e-commerce strategy, you also need to build your brand. I just saw this in practice. I just told you exactly what happened. Unless customers ask for you by name, ChatGPT — and every other AI answer engine or agent or whatever comes along next — is going to do what’s best for their business. Not Expedia’s, not Bookings.com‘s and not yours. Theirs.

They have to if they’re going to succeed. Again, Sam Altman told us "if we ever start doing anything that is not our best effort to get the user to the best answer, trust in ChatGPT would fall." Your job then is to make sure you’re the trusted brand that your customers ask for every time, regardless of the vertical you’re in.

Remember, the brand is the prompt. Don’t put yourself at the mercy of another gatekeeper that puts their interests — your customers’ interests — ahead of yours. Always remember that the lasting brand that Altman and company seek to build is not going to be yours. It’s going to be theirs.

Show Wrap-Up and Credits

Now looking at the clock on the wall, we are out of time for this week. I’m willing to bet that you might know someone who would benefit from what we’ve talked about today. Are you thinking of someone? Why not send them link to the episode? Let them know what you think too. Keep the conversation going.

You can also find the show notes for this episode, episode 471, and an archive of all of our past episodes.by going to timpeter.com/podcast. Again, that’s timpeter.com/podcast.

And of course, be sure to like and subscribe wherever you get your favorite podcasts.

If you want to learn more about these topics and lots more, I’d love to suggest that you pick up a copy of my book, * Digital Reset: Driving Marketing and Customer Acquisition Beyond Big Tech, that you can find on Amazon.com or Bookshop.org. And you can find the links for those in the show notes.

Be sure to let me know what you think of the book, too. I’d genuinely appreciate it.

Finally, thank you so much for listening. This show would not happen without you. We’ll be back with a new episode next week. And until then, please be well, be safe, and as the saying goes, be excellent to each other. We’ll see you soon.

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