• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, 5 hours ago

Wildfire Systems, which powers a white-label loyalty and rewards program, has announced a platform enabling consumers to earn cashback and rewards from AI-assisted shopping services. The company links products based on consumer prompts. 

Interacting with product suggestions from Google’s Gemini, Microsoft Copilot, OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Anthropic’s Claude and Perplexity, shoppers can receive cashback through Wildfire’s browser extensions. Partners can integrate loyalty rewards directly into AI-influenced recommendations.

The new capabilities allow publishers and loyalty providers to monetize AI-generated product suggestions as search engines turn into response engines, said Jordan Glazier, CEO at Wildfire. “Getting ranked on the first page of a search engine is less relevant because a list of companies no longer exists,” he said. “There’s an answer, and you need to factor yourself into the response.”

This update capitalizes on the emerging shifts in consumer behavior. Wildfire ensures rewards and affiliate monetization occurs when the decision takes place, whether it’s a search result, AI suggestion, an agent transaction.

The new feature, built on Wildfire’s core platform, combines with capabilities developed for integrating affiliate monetization and loyalty into AI platforms and autonomous agents. The white-label browser extension detects brand mentions and product links on web pages, like those from AI tools or AI-enhanced search.

When a cashback-eligible merchant is identified, the extension provides a link and displays how much cashback or rewards the user can earn.

Tracking and attribution are handled behind the scenes by Wildfire’s platform, ensuring seamless experiences and reliable payouts.

Retail and ecommerce brands can realize higher sales conversion rates from AI-Influenced discovery when cashback incentives are highlighted. They can experience increased average order value from AI-driven shopping, and remain competitive as the shopping funnel changes, with AI becoming a starting point for shopping.

Consumers go through Microsoft’s rewards program, Citi’s rewards program, Royal Bank of Canada’s rewards program, or multiple others, Glazier said. Wildfire is the backbone as a white-label service.

“If you go to Bing and search for a hammer and see Lowe’s for a coupon or cash back baked into the cashback program, that’s Microsoft and Wildfire working together,” he said. Other merchants include Ace Hardware, Petco, Sephora, Ulta, and many others. 

About 58,000 merchants work with Wildfire to offer this service worldwide. He said the lowest price on the product will draw in the consumer.

“In a world where the interface where consumers shop continues to change rapidly, an interface that hasn’t changed in about 25 years,” he said. “It will dramatically impact advertisers and retails. There will be winners and losers. Merchants will need to rethink how to get themselves back on the screen.”