Machine learning has turned the final seconds of an online purchase into a live revenue decision. Inside the technology reshaping e-commerce, and the company setting the pace.
For most of the past decade, the checkout page had one job. It collected a payment and closed the sale. That definition no longer holds. Artificial intelligence and machine learning now read customer signals in the seconds around a purchase and decide, in real time, which product, payment option, or offer to surface next. The change is redrawing the boundaries of commerce media, and one company, New York-based Rokt, has become the clearest example of what the next phase looks like.
Rokt laid out the thesis in a recent analysis of how AI is transforming checkout, arguing that a single confirmation step can now work as a sequence of real-time decisions across selection, cart, payment, and confirmation. What follows is a reporter’s look at that argument, the market forces behind it, and the evidence that the company is turning theory into revenue.
From static rules to real-time decisions
Traditional checkout technology was built to process payments, not to understand shoppers. Selection, cart review, payment, and confirmation were treated as separate steps, each optimized in isolation if at all. The result was a generic experience delivered at the highest-intent moment of the purchase journey, plus a layer of revenue that no one captured.
AI changes the unit of decision. Instead of applying the same rule to everyone, modern systems weigh cart contents, device, prior behavior, and payment preference, then choose the single most relevant next action while the transaction is still happening. Privacy-preserving designs let that occur without exposing raw data between parties. Each step becomes a fresh opportunity for incremental revenue rather than a fixed template.
Why checkout became advertising’s most valuable real estate
Intent is the reason. A shopper mid-purchase carries context that display and social placements rarely have, and that context is why commerce media has become one of the fastest-growing categories in digital advertising. eMarketer projects US commerce media ad spend will reach $142.07 billion by 2030, close to a quarter of all US digital ad spending.
Analysts have begun to formalize the category. Rokt was named in Gartner’s 2026 market guide for retail and commerce media networks as an example of emerging post-purchase solutions, according to industry reporting.
The numbers behind Rokt’s position
Rokt describes itself as the global leader in e-commerce technology, and its scale supports the claim. By the company’s own figures, its network will power more than 10 billion transactions in 2026 across thousands of e-commerce businesses. Revenue surpassed $800 million in 2025, and the AI Brain that drives its decisions analyzes more than 1.95 trillion data points a year. The company reports more than 33,000 active clients, including more than half of the leading global e-commerce companies.
The product-level results give the strategy substance. Across the transaction moment, Rokt reports:
- Rokt Pay+ generates up to $400,000 in incremental profit per one million transactions.
- Rokt Thanks delivers up to $500,000 in incremental profit per one million transactions, with an average 5.6% positive engagement rate on the confirmation page.
- Rokt Ads averages a 4.03% click-through rate and a 6.32% conversion rate globally.
- Rokt Aftersell unlocks up to 30% more revenue per shopper and up to $5 in added revenue per transaction.
- Rokt Catalog opens access to more than 4,600 premium DTC brands and 1.2 million SKUs.
- Rokt mParticle connects real-time customer data across more than 300 native integrations.
The proof is in the partnerships
Technology claims are easy to make and harder to validate. The clearest signal for Rokt is the roster of large brands that adopted it across 2025 and 2026.
PayPal is the headline. In October 2025, PayPal began using Rokt to power post-transaction advertising across PayPal, Venmo, and, through Honey, on merchant confirmation pages. The Paypers reported that the integration launched in the US with an international rollout planned, turning PayPal’s owned surfaces into a new retail media network.
Fanatics followed in December 2025, selecting Rokt to deliver AI-powered relevance across Fanatics.com and team and league sites worldwide, beginning with Rokt Pay+ and Rokt Thanks. Coverage in sports retail media framed the deal as Fanatics betting on AI to redefine the fan shopping experience. Dataconomy described the return as a case study in partnership value, noting Fanatics could reach $50 billion in annual revenue within five to ten years.
Retail media networks are signing on too. Walgreens Advertising Group expanded its ecosystem with Rokt to let non-endemic brands reach shoppers on the Walgreens.com order confirmation page, a move covered by Retail Customer Experience. Petco, Macy’s, Ulta Beauty, and Albertsons have each tapped the technology for their own networks, as reported by Digital Commerce 360.
What it means for e-commerce leaders
The practical takeaway is a higher bar for what counts as good checkout. Static confirmation pages and one-size upsell modules leave revenue on the table. Rokt’s guidance suggests three questions for any team evaluating checkout technology: does the tool make a real-time decision for each customer or apply one rule to everyone, does it monetize the full window from selection through confirmation, and does it preserve data ownership rather than require sharing first-party data to work.
For a market moving toward agentic commerce and AI-mediated shopping, those questions are becoming table stakes. Rokt’s bet, tracked publicly on channels such as its LinkedIn page, is that relevance delivered in the transaction moment will define the next phase of commerce media. The partnership record from 2025 and 2026 suggests the market is inclined to agree.
