‘Connected packaging’ is scaling fast, are you in shape?

Every conversation about agentic AI agents and ecommerce assumes the AI agent’s journey starts online, but it actually begins on the shelf. Most agentic commerce awareness and understanding stops at software – APIs, checkout flows and agent protocols.

All necessary, but none of it accounts for what happens first. The packaging QR code scan is what turns that human moment into data an AI agent can use. The QR code on the packaging is the AI agent’s first handshake with the product, and it’s a handshake most of the industry hasn’t designed for yet.

The Global Connected Packaging Survey 2026 found 83.3% of brands are now planning connected packaging, up from 76.7% the year before. Interest in serialised QR codes has climbed to 73.2%, up 7.1 percentage points, and 92.3% of respondents say connected packaging is increasingly important to the industry. Well-designed connected packaging is pulling scan rates of 14%, against 0.1% for a traditional digital ad, with an average dwell time of three minutes per session. This isn’t emerging, it’s here, and it’s scaling fast.

The mechanics are simple by design: a consumer scans a QR code on packaging, a web-app experience opens and there’s no app to download. Scan a Bacardi bottle, for example, and you land on a cocktail recipe personalised to inventory, with the option to reorder straight from the connected packaging experience.

The AI infrastructure that decides who gets found
Whether an AI agent can do the same thing comes down the QR code connecting to a GS1 Digital Link, which is the standardised method for encoding identifiers, along with batch numbers, serial numbers, expiry dates etc. A GS1 Digital Link is the standardised, open Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) that links from any QR code to structured product data.

Scan the code, hit the Digital Link and that once opened can be read by an AI agent, a consumer’s browser, a retailer’s system or a loyalty platform. An open GS1 URI means any AI agent, on any device, can find the product.

A proprietary QR platform, by comparison, means the data is locked. The agent can’t parse it, and the product is effectively invisible to agentic commerce. That distinction determines whether a product is discoverable by AI or not, and as GS1’s Sunrise 2027 deadline looms this is an increasingly important consideration for brands as they move away from barcodes.

We’re already seeing what this looks like at scale. Danone Alpro Kid’s connected-packaging campaign, built for personalised engagement, sustainability messaging and pack-based reorder, pulled that same 14% scan rate against the 0.1% digital-ad benchmark, more than 313k total page views and average visit duration over four minutes. Showing that consumers will scan when the value is on the packaging.

Bacardi and Tetra Pak’s serialised QR deployments show a unique code per unit can carry personalisation and supply-chain authenticity verification at once, exactly the capability 73.2% of brands say they want. Each QR code is unique and that enables both personalisation and integrity.

Emmi’s sticker-based serialised QR campaign proved brands don’t need perfect packaging to achieve GS1 compliance. Connected packaging offered AR games and instant weekly prizes. It saw 18.9,000 package scans which drove more than 250,000 total visits and 38,000 games played. The serialised QR codes applied via sticker unlocked personalised experiences, rewards redemption and real-time customer insights, showing that when the reward is instant, the scan becomes irresistible.

What brands need to do now
There are three key actions brands should look to take soon, these include:

1: Implement GS1 Digital Link compliance – using open standards instead of proprietary platforms. It isn’t enough to have a QR code, it must resolve to the right data, in the right format, for the right systems.

2: Publish structured product data – share allergens, nutrition, sustainability and authenticity in a format AI can resolve.

3: Design packaging for humans and AI agents – create QR codes that work for consumer engagement and machine readability. It’s important for that same QR code that engages a consumer can be machine-readable too.

Connected packaging isn’t a future bet: 81.2% of companies are currently using the technology, scan rates are outperforming traditional digital ads, and the case studies show real engagement, not just curiosity.

The GS1 Digital Link is what turns that packaging into something an agent can read, and Sunrise 2027 will decide who’s ready and who’s scrambling. Open standard, structured data, designed for both humans and machines, that’s the whole job.

AI agents are becoming the newest intermediary in ecommerce, but they don’t start online. They start when a consumer picks up a product, and the QR code on that packaging is where AI meets physical commerce. The physical world is ready; the question left for the industry is whether the digital layer is too.

Jenny Stanley is founder and managing director at Appetite Creative