Global Industry Leaders Chart the Future of Agentic Commerce and AI-Driven Search
The annual Reykjavík Internet Marketing Conference (RIMC 2026) officially concluded, bringing together leading global digital strategists, retail executives, and search optimisation pioneers. This year's conference was concerned with the paradigm shift affecting digital marketing, namely the move from traditional search engines to conversational Large Language Models (LLMs) and autonomous AI purchasing agents.
The fact that AI adoption is changing user behaviour around the world was illustrated by RIMC 2026 in showing that businesses have to reorganise their digital architecture, product data, and brand presence if they are to remain discoverable and trusted in an AI-first marketplace.
Keynotes Highlight the Shift Beyond "Ten Blue Links"
The conference included keynote speeches and talks with prominent figures from the retail, technical, and digital marketing fields such as Arnoldo Cabrera, who is the Global Digital Optimisation Manager at IKEA; Christian Sogn Iversen, CEO of the Nordic specialist toy retail company Sprell; and Alex Moss, principal SEO at Yoast and co-founder of FireCask.
In an interview with Morgunblaðið, a local newspaper, on the evolution of search, Cabrera emphasised how conversational interfaces are reshaping customer journeys:
For decades, digital discovery was characterised by Google's ten blue links, but that era is now coming to an end. Nowadays, search is exponential and conversational, with people using AI to plan holidays, compare different options and find products. At IKEA, our problem is not simply getting ourselves listed on a results page, but making sure that our products, such as the Billy bookcase, are recommended directly in these AI conversations by giving customer behaviour the main focus.
Christian Sogn Iversen presented Sprell’s approach to blending physical retail experiences with machine-readable infrastructure:
The fact that we took part in RIMC 2026 shows clearly how quickly commerce interfaces are evolving. Although technology and channels will always be in a state of change, we can make sure that our curated brand stays relevant to both human shoppers and AI search agents by creating clean, trusted, and machine-readable product data at this stage.
Alex Moss addressed the underlying technical mechanics required to ensure brands remain visible and actionable as autonomous agents take over product discovery:
Agentic commerce is no longer just a theory—it's taking place at this moment in search and on various platforms. The major issue facing brands nowadays isn't trying to keep up with every new AI tool, but rather taking responsibility for the truth of their own data. Since AI agents cannot recommend or purchase things that they can't read accurately, companies can provide AI agents with the trustworthy basis they need to carry out transactions smoothly by mastering the structured schema layers, keeping their product feeds clean, and removing any data ambiguity.
The Era of Agentic Commerce & Data Integrity
In the various sessions chaired by international SEO experts and technical architects, repeated themes stressed that "AI-ready" commerce needs strict data accuracy, structured knowledge graphs, and standardised protocols such as Schema.org in order to avoid AI hallucinations and ensure reliable recommendations.
Reflecting on the success of the conference, Kristján Már Hauksson, Conference Chair and Moderator of RIMC 2026, stated:
This year’s RIMC has made it obvious that our aim is not merely to prepare for AI but to be actively working in the era of agentic commerce. The points presented by our speakers show that even though the interfaces and algorithms are changing at an unprecedented rate, the fundamental objective stays the same—namely, the creation of structured and accurate data and the preservation of genuine human trust. We are proud that RIMC still remains a major destination for global leaders who want to plan the future of digital strategy.
Photo taken by Snorri Sturluson. From the left, you have Snæbjörn Ragnarsson (Creative Director – Pipar/TBWA), Christian Sogn Iversen (CEO - Sprellgruppen), Alex Moss (Principal SEO - Yoast), Arnoldo Cabrera (Digital Optimisation Manager at IKEA Group), Einar Thor (CEO, Finds) and Kristjan Mar Hauksson (Conference Chair - RIMC).
The RIMC team
rimc@rimc.is
www.rimc.is
+354 5109000
The Reykjavík Internet Marketing Conference (RIMC), which was established in 2004, is Iceland's leading event in the field of digital marketing, search engine optimisation, and web analytics. Over more than twenty years, RIMC has acted as an important reality check for people working in the industry by linking global technology trends with practical business strategy. Through combining keynote addresses from around the world, presentations by regional pioneers and input from local experts, RIMC provides marketers, executives and e-commerce leaders with the insights they need in order to cope with the changing digital environment.
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