Bloomreach is making a decisive move to help brands stay visible—and in control—as shopping behavior shifts into conversational AI. The company announced Loomi Connect, a new capability that makes Bloomreach’s product discovery technology available through the Model Context Protocol (MCP), allowing retailers to bring their ecommerce search intelligence directly into ChatGPT and other conversational AI platforms.

In practical terms, Loomi Connect lets the same algorithms, ranking logic, and performance signals that drive conversions on a retailer’s website also determine how products surface inside AI-powered conversations. As more consumers turn to ChatGPT as a shopping assistant, Bloomreach is positioning conversational AI not as a threat to ecommerce, but as its next major channel.

Conversational Commerce Is No Longer Theoretical

Bloomreach’s launch is grounded in a sharp shift in consumer behavior. According to a company survey of more than 1,000 U.S. consumers, nearly half now shop with ChatGPT several times a week or more. More striking: when asked to choose between ChatGPT and a traditional ecommerce site, 41% said they would pick ChatGPT.

That data underscores a growing reality for retailers. Product discovery is no longer confined to search bars and category pages. It’s happening inside conversations—often before a shopper ever lands on a brand-owned site.

For years, brands invested heavily in on-site search optimization, merchandising rules, and personalization engines to control how products are discovered. Conversational AI threatens to bypass much of that work unless brands can inject their own intelligence into those experiences. Loomi Connect is Bloomreach’s answer to that problem.

What Loomi Connect Actually Does

Loomi Connect integrates Bloomreach’s product discovery stack directly into ChatGPT apps built on the OpenAI marketplace. Instead of relying on generic recommendations or static product feeds, ChatGPT can surface products using the same AI models and behavioral data that power a retailer’s ecommerce search.

That includes signals such as:

• Historical conversion performance

• Product availability and relevance

• Customer behavior patterns

• Merchandising logic refined over years of optimization

The result is product recommendations that are not only relevant to consumers, but also aligned with business goals such as profitability, inventory management, and conversion efficiency.

Equally important, Loomi Connect captures interaction data from conversational channels and feeds it back into Bloomreach’s customer profiles. This allows personalization to flow both ways—between a brand’s ecommerce site and AI-driven conversations—rather than fragmenting customer data across disconnected touchpoints.

Why MCP Matters for Commerce

The launch also highlights the growing role of the Model Context Protocol (MCP) as a bridge between enterprise systems and AI platforms. MCP enables structured, governed access to proprietary data and logic, making it possible for brands to expose intelligence to AI systems without relinquishing control.

For commerce teams, this is critical. Letting conversational AI “freestyle” product discovery can lead to inconsistent recommendations, margin erosion, or compliance risks. By plugging into MCP, Bloomreach allows brands to define how their data is used, which rules apply, and how recommendations are generated—even inside third-party AI environments.

This mirrors how brands approached earlier channels like email, SMS, and social media: initial experimentation followed by a push for control, consistency, and measurement.

ChatGPT As A Channel, Not A Competitor

Bloomreach is explicit about how it views the role of conversational AI in ecommerce.

“ChatGPT isn’t the competitor to the brand experience—it’s the next channel within it,” said Raj De Datta, co-founder and CEO of Bloomreach. “Brands need to take control of their presence on conversational channels, just as they did with email, SMS, and social media.”

That framing is significant. Rather than resisting AI-driven discovery, Bloomreach is encouraging brands to treat ChatGPT as an extension of their owned experience—one that should reflect the same intelligence, personalization, and strategic intent.

This stance aligns with a broader MarTech trend: brands increasingly accept that discovery happens off-site, but they still want to influence how it happens. Loomi Connect offers a way to project brand-specific intelligence into environments that retailers don’t directly own.

The Stakes For Retailers And Brands

The implications go beyond better recommendations. As conversational AI becomes a primary interface for shopping research and decision-making, brands that fail to integrate risk losing visibility—or worse, losing control over how their products are positioned.

Generic AI recommendations can prioritize popularity over profitability, relevance over compliance, or convenience over brand strategy. Bloomreach’s approach aims to ensure that when products appear in AI conversations, they do so on the brand’s terms.

For retailers already using Bloomreach for onsite search and personalization, Loomi Connect offers continuity. Years of tuning algorithms, refining relevance models, and analyzing shopper behavior don’t disappear in the age of conversational commerce—they extend into it.

How This Fits Into The Broader MarTech Landscape

Loomi Connect lands at the intersection of three major trends reshaping marketing and commerce technology:

1. Conversational interfaces replacing traditional search

2. AI platforms becoming new discovery gateways

3. Brands demanding governance and measurement in AI-driven channels

While many vendors are racing to “add AI,” Bloomreach is addressing a more nuanced challenge: how to operationalize AI across channels without fragmenting data, logic, or control.

In that sense, Loomi Connect isn’t just a feature—it’s infrastructure for a world where product discovery is increasingly conversational, decentralized, and mediated by large language models.

The Bottom Line

Bloomreach’s Loomi Connect signals a shift in how ecommerce leaders should think about AI-driven shopping. Conversational platforms like ChatGPT are no longer experimental—they’re becoming default entry points for discovery.

By enabling brands to bring their proven search intelligence into those conversations, Bloomreach is helping retailers protect relevance, consistency, and performance as commerce moves beyond the website. For brands navigating the next phase of digital commerce, that control may prove as important as reach itself.

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