Gap Inc. is expanding its use of AI, data, and automation across its marketing operations, covering campaign planning, personalisation, and execution across its brands.
The company announced the initiative at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. It is working with Google Cloud, Zeta Global, and Publicis Sapient on the effort, which covers its brand portfolio, including Gap, Old Navy, Banana Republic, and Athleta.
The initiative covers Gap’s shared marketing organisation across its brand portfolio. It includes customer data, content, owned channels, and e-commerce.
Gap said the initiative is intended to reduce silos across its marketing organisation and give teams better access to data. Damon Berger, senior vice president for marketing shared services at Gap Inc., said AI is being used to support strategy, storytelling, and customer interactions.
Building the data layer
Google Cloud is providing the data and AI layer for the project. Gap announced its multi-year Google Cloud agreement in October 2025 and is using the company’s technology to bring together customer and product intelligence.
The work builds on that agreement, which was designed to support AI use across Old Navy, Gap, Banana Republic, and Athleta, including e-commerce, product creation, and customer experience.
The retailer plans to use that foundation to support personalisation, decision-making, and continuous learning across content, activations, and e-commerce. The broader partnership also gives Gap access to Vertex AI, BigQuery, and Gemini.
Gap is also using Agent Studio, Agent Engine, Gemini, Nano Banana, and Veo for AI workflows and image and video content generation. The company did not provide detailed output targets or cost figures for the content production work.
Starting with owned channels
The rollout will begin with Gap’s owned marketing channels, where Zeta Global will support the development of an AI-powered marketing stack. Those channels include Gap’s e-commerce sites, apps, emails, loyalty communications, and other direct customer messaging.
Zeta Global is supporting the retailer’s owned marketing channels through Athena by Zeta. The platform is designed to connect customer data, decisions, and campaign execution, including audience strategy, creative development, activation, and optimisation.
Gap said Athena’s agentic capabilities will support decision-making across audience strategy, creative development, campaign activation, and optimisation.
Gap said the work will support more personalised experiences and faster campaign delivery across key marketing channels.
Publicis Sapient is supporting the broader implementation across talent, process, technology, data, and partner systems. Its work includes connecting content, commerce, activation, and customer signals as part of Gap’s marketing operating model.
Gap CTO Sven Gerjets said the company is using data, AI, and agentic capabilities to better understand customer intent and improve how teams work across its brand portfolio.
Linking marketing to commerce
Gap’s Office of AI introduced new shopping technologies in March, including personalised fit guidance and support for Google’s Universal Commerce Protocol. The company also introduced more personalised shopping features during the 2025 holiday season, including curated trend-based recommendations and a digital assistant across its e-commerce sites and apps.
In March, Gap said customers would be able to discover and buy products through AI Mode in Google Search and the Gemini app, using Google’s Universal Commerce Protocol. The protocol is designed to let AI systems connect to merchant checkout flows and complete transactions within conversational interfaces.
Gap has also worked with Bold Metrics on personalised fit guidance for size recommendations within AI-enabled shopping interfaces.
The same Google Cloud partnership also covers product development, customer experience, and employee decision-making. Gap has said AI tools are being used across parts of the product-to-market process, including design, planning, and pricing.
The project comes as Gap continues to prioritise technology investment. In its first quarter of 2026, the company reported its ninth consecutive quarter of positive comparable sales.
In fiscal Q1 2026, Gap reported net sales of US$3.50 billion, up 1.0% year over year. Store sales rose 3%, while online sales fell 2%.
Online sales represented 38% of total net sales in the quarter. Comparable sales at the Gap brand helped offset smaller gains at Old Navy and Banana Republic, while Athleta reported an 11% decline.
Gap president and CEO Richard Dickson said on the company’s earnings call that technology remains one of its investment priorities. Dickson described Gap as a “brand-led and intelligence powered” fashion company.
He said data and AI are being used to help teams make decisions with greater consistency and efficiency. He also said Gap is using product intelligence to improve how it designs, buys, allocates, and replenishes inventory.
Gap also relaunched its loyalty programme, Encore, during the quarter. The programme covers Old Navy, Gap, Banana Republic, and Athleta, and includes access, content, experiences, and rewards across the company’s brands.
Loyalty communications are among the owned channels included in the marketing rollout. Encore gives Gap another direct customer channel tied to its broader work across marketing, e-commerce, and customer engagement.
(Photo by lan deng)
See also: Warner Bros Discovery expands agentic AI use in ad buying
Want to learn more about AI and big data from industry leaders? Check out AI & Big Data Expo taking place in Amsterdam, California, and London. The comprehensive event is part of TechEx and is co-located with other leading technology events, click here for more information.
Marketing Tech News is powered by TechForge Media. Explore other upcoming enterprise technology events and webinars here.