Meta's AI agent Muse is running into a practical wall: blocked website access is becoming the core bottleneck for monetizing its agentic commerce, rather than the model's capabilities themselves.

According to Jefferies' latest research note, analysts tested hundreds of major US e-commerce, airline, online travel, hotel and booking websites and found that roughly one-third directly block Muse, another one-third impose challenges or restrictions, and only about one-third can be used smoothly. If this access friction continues to grow, it could delay Meta's agentic commerce monetization timeline while further entrenching Alphabet's structural advantage.

At the same time, Meta's advertising fundamentals remain solid. Jefferies' advertising expert survey shows that surveyed advertisers' Meta ad spending growth in the third quarter of 2026 has surpassed Alphabet, and this trend is expected to continue into the fourth quarter of 2026 and the first quarter of 2027. Jefferies maintains a buy rating on Meta with a target price of $875, implying about 18% upside from the current share price.

Access barriers replace model capability as Muse's biggest constraint

Jefferies analyst Brent Thill's team noted in the report that Muse's technical capabilities continue to impress, but the bottleneck for agentic commerce is shifting from "is the model good enough" to "can it get in."

The test results show that website restrictions on agent access are being added almost daily. Among the hundreds of websites tested, about one-third directly block Muse, another one-third restrict automated interaction through verification challenges or other means, and only about one-third can be smoothly navigated by Muse.

The report argues that many websites choosing to block or challenge automated interaction by default is a wrong decision in the long run, because agentic commerce will broaden distribution channels. Meta's response strategy is to build sanctioned connectors with merchants, and it has announced partnerships with Walmart, Best Buy, Wayfair, Sephora and Dick's Sporting Goods, but most integrations are still in early deployment stages and have not yet officially launched.

However, access friction could slow the overall adoption pace of agentic commerce and ultimately lengthen the timeline for Meta to achieve meaningful commission-based monetization.

Alphabet's moat benefits as enterprise customer service market opens new opportunities

The access barrier issue objectively highlights Alphabet's structural advantage.

The Jefferies report notes that the vast majority of enterprises are unwilling to block Googlebot because doing so would deal a substantial blow to their search traffic. This reality gives Alphabet a significant advantage in data acquisition and web access, and as the AI agent era arrives, the value of this moat may rise further.

Alphabet's crawler system, distribution network and long-accumulated web access permissions provide its agent products with native coverage breadth and contextual capabilities, while competitors may have to negotiate access site by site.

At the same time, the surge in customer service inquiries brought by agentic commerce is also creating new market opportunities for enterprise customer service software vendors. In its testing, Jefferies found that Muse interacts most frequently with enterprises' self-built customer service systems, followed by CRM systems and Sierra. The report argues that listed companies such as CRM, HUBS and NOW, as well as private companies such as Sierra and Decagon, are all expected to benefit from this trend.

Strong ad demand as Muse buzz feeds back into Meta's advertising ecosystem

Although agentic commerce monetization faces timeline uncertainty, Meta's advertising business fundamentals have not been dragged down, and Muse's popularity itself is translating into incremental demand for advertising.

Jefferies' third-quarter 2026 advertising expert survey (sample size N=20) shows that 40% of advertisers expect Muse to increase their clients' ad spending on Meta platforms within the next 12 months. Surveyed advertising experts also noted that as agentic AI handles more queries, advertising optimization goals will shift from clicks to outcome-oriented results, a trend that provides positive support for Meta's advertising product logic.

Jefferies maintains a buy rating on Meta with a target price of $875, corresponding to about 25 times expected 2027 earnings per share. The report also flags declining user engagement, advertiser churn and regulatory risk as the main downside risks.