Software with the screen taken off. The data, the content and the functions stay. The interface goes. Everything is reachable through an API, and increasingly through MCP, so an AI agent can do the work without ever logging in.
The term started with headless commerce and headless CMS, where one back end fed a website, an app and a kiosk.
In AI marketing it means two things:
- Your martech stack exposes every capability to agents, so an agent can build the audience, launch the campaign and pull the report with no ticket and no dashboard.
- And your content and product data become something agents read directly, because a growing share of your visitors will be assistants shopping on someone’s behalf.
Ask every vendor at renewal one question: can an agent do everything a person can do in your UI?
If the answer is no, you’re buying a walled garden.
