• by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer, Yesterday

The collapse of the customer buying journey into a couple of taps that take only a few seconds or minutes at the longest may be one of the most profound ways I have read to describe the future of online advertising through agentic commerce with artificial intelligence (AI) the only form of influencer. It also means optimizing agents.

No browsing or websites to visit. No social media to influence consumers. Just the agent. What happens to media buying?

That's how Interbrand described online shopping in its latest Interbrand Best Global Brands 2025 report released Thursday.

Understanding this makes it clear why the top five brands in this year's report were all technology companies, although many of them have their own branded products. Apple ranked No.1 in this year’s study followed by Microsoft, Amazon, Google, and Samsung, in that order.

The total value of 2025’s Best Global Brands rose by $150 billion to $3.6 trillion this year -- a 4.4% increase from $3.4 trillion in 2024.

In the past week the financial investments made in AI and agentic services by companies such as Google, Microsoft, Salesforce, OpenAI, and Anthropic, just to name a few, are in the billions of dollars.

Strong brands influence customer choice and create loyalty, but I really don’t think anyone needs to be reminded.

The methodology in this research was designed to take all these factors into account, including the fact that strong brands attract, retain, and motivate consumers to make a choice.

The list is based on the Role of Brand Index (RBI) as a percentage of outcome. RBI is determined, depending on the brand, from one of three ways: commissioned market research, benchmarking against Role of Brand scores from client projects with brands in the same industry, or expert panel assessment.

There is no doubt that AI has changed the way people search and make choices.

“While brands do not face an imminent risk of extinction, they do face the prospect of accelerated selection,” the study notes. “There will still be many names, logos and labels out there – but in time, fewer will be truly capable of influencing human choice.”

No brand will be exempt. The study notes this is the challenge they face. And what happens when consumers no longer tap an app, the report asks.

Those who wrote the Interbrand report are convinced that building brands will "increasingly be akin to developing a living character -- an entity infused with standards, values and principles that can act adaptively, but with coherence and integrity.

Some companies will focus on features and price, and think of their brand purely as a label – a relatively unimportant, highly replicable wrapping designed to be brokered by artificial agents, per the study.

Brands will fight what is referred to as “an algorithmic battle, with limited control” of growth.

Others will rely on boardrooms and business leaders to build brands that defy agentic agents to shape and sway human perceptions and behaviors – driving choice, engendering loyalty and directly impacting profit and share price.

The most successful companies will balance both—bots and humans, according to the study. And this is one reason the industry will see the collapse of the customer journey.