Original research · Consumer & Retail

adidas.

Last measured · 23 May 2026 Wave · Q2-2026-W3-SLOW Tier · proprietary Confidence · D
Brand
adidas AG
Agent success

Akamai 403 at homepage entry across every measured agent class.

Bottleneck Usability
Found, but the surface stalls the agent.
3.4 /10
Agent Success Score
AI Visibility 35 / 100

Found & recommended by AI agents

AI Usability 28 / 100

Search-class agents touched the close in some runs; the full agent-fleet access profile lands in a later wave.

Coverage · 1 of 6 lanes measured Commerce lane · Wave Q2-2026-W3-SLOW
Commerce 3.4
Talent
After-sales
Procurement
Investor
Press

This page measures the commerce lane: can an agent find adidas, and once it arrives, transact. Talent, after-sales, procurement, investor and press lanes run on different surfaces and are not yet measured.

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The test

Documented hard-block. Sub-pilot finding, measured below the G6 threshold.

We asked five kinds of AI agent to add an Ultraboost 5 (men's, size 43) to a cart on adidas.de. Every single one hit the Akamai 403 page at homepage entry: 'Leider können wir im Moment keinen Zugriff auf unsere Seite geben.' Reference URL: error 0.cad5ce17.1775309423.3d04a9b. The block was stable across all three standard browser runs; the autonomous agent observed the same blocked product page on the start URL. No product detail, cart, login prompt, or checkout form became reachable. The Five-Agents-Five-Answers passing count is 0/5; per G6 this is a sub-pilot finding.

One label, many breeds. From a plain reader to an autonomous operator, the kinds behind ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude Code:

Plain reader reads your raw page text, no browser Blocked
Search assistant finds you through search Not yet run
Coding agent a script hitting your site Blocked
Computer-use agent clicks and types like a person Blocked
Autonomous operator runs the whole task unattended Blocked

Blocked somewhere on the path: Plain reader, Coding agent, Computer-use agent, Autonomous operator. A customer whose assistant runs on one of those breeds never finishes the task.

Commerce lane

Found, and able to transact?

Two questions, measured separately. A brand can be recommended and still un-buyable, or perfectly buyable and never found.

AI Visibility

When someone asks an agent to buy a product, does it route to adidas?

35 / 100

adidas comes up about a third of the time. The rest of the time, an agent recommends an alternative first.

Discoverability · 18-datapoint audit
AI Usability

Once an agent is on adidas's site, can it check out?

28 / 100

Search-class agents surface a working cart in some runs; the full agent-fleet access profile lands in a later wave.

Evidence · 70 / 100 A measure of how provable and consistent the result is, grounded in cross-method ground-truth agreement (the methods that ran returned the same price), not a separate measured run. A confidence layer on the two scores above, not a third sales axis.

What's next

What this means for adidas.

Diagnosis

Adidas is not failing on product or surface design here; it is unreachable to every agent class we measured. The Akamai-shaped 403 at homepage entry is the deal-breaker. This is a documented hard-block, the sub-pilot finding most operators would prefer to know early. Until that entry-gate distinguishes humans from agents in a configurable way, no product, cart, or checkout measurement is possible on this surface.

What changes the outcome

Agent-class entry policy, not surface polish. A WAF rule that admits identified, declared agents to the same surface humans use, an agent-readable catalog and add-to-cart contract, and citeable evidence that the surface accepts agent traffic so an answer engine learns it can recommend adidas at all. None of that is possible while the homepage returns 403 to every agent class.

What proof looks like

The proof is not a different shoe. It is the same Ultraboost 5 add-to-cart task running clean from at least three of five agent classes on the next wave, re-measured.

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Channel position

No intermediary stands between agents and adidas. The gap is being found, not the channel.

Across the 18 Gate-1 responses, no displacing intermediary captured the running-shoe question: brand-direct surfaces (Nike, ASICS, Brooks) get named as alternatives, but those are competitors, not intermediary capture. adidas.de appeared in 5 of 18 (28%). The story is brand absence on the unbranded category probe, not portal displacement — at the surface itself the Akamai 403 prevents any agent from completing the path even when the brand IS named.

28% direct
0% via intermediary
Frozen task slate

Hyperize-selected tasks.

One task from the public sector grid. Task list is frozen before each wave runs.

adidas Ultraboost 5 (cart) — sub-pilot probe

Close state
a working cart
Bottleneck
Stable homepage-level Akamai 403 across all measured agent classes; failure is hard-block, not product unavailability. No product, cart, or checkout interaction reachable. Sub-pilot per G6 (0/5).

Fairness note

Wave 3 Slow Lane (a fleet wave Consumer Retail, sub-pilot). Single measured task (Ultraboost 5 add-to-cart, cart_ready close state). Hard Akamai 403 block at homepage entry across every agent class measured; 0/5 reach close state, sub-pilot per G6. AI Visibility 35.0 (18/18 valid datapoints across 3 providers); AI Usability is low (derived from the per-class access profile — every agent class is blocked at the entry gate, so the score reflects depth-of-block, not cart depth). Channel split grounded via channel-derive.py (0/18 displacing intermediary; brand competitors Nike/ASICS/Brooks excluded per Resolver as competitors not capture). The page carries the Pilot probe chip and noindex via confidence=D — measured, but below the G6 threshold for a normal scored brand.

Methodology

How the score was produced.

Discoverability is audit-pipeline-derived. 3-provider sample (openai, perplexity, anthropic), 3 query variants per task, 2 runs per variant · 18 valid datapoints scored against a five-state handoff cascade. [S1]

AI Usability is derived from the access-profile above (usability-derivation/v1): how far the best agent reached (close state) modulated by how many agent classes succeeded. The per-class profile is the truth; the score is a reproducible summary of it, not a separate rating. Fleet phases (HTTP / Coding / Browser / ACT) produce the profile. [S2]

Formula

Agent Success Score = (AI Visibility × 0.20) + (AI Usability × 0.70) + (Evidence × 0.10)

On a 0–100 scale, displayed 0–10. AI Usability bundles the agent's reach + completion; AI Visibility is audit-derived discoverability. Weighting is public; the per-prompt derivation is not.

Measurement scope

Confidence D · one measured task on a 3-provider track (openai, perplexity, anthropic). Confidence promotes to B with a second task plus a fourth provider on the next wave.

History

Measurement timeline.

Each wave appends; nothing overwrites. Frozen Wave Rule.

  1. Entry · 01

    23 May 2026

    Wave · Protocol

    WAVE-Q2-2026-W3-SLOW

    ars-methodology/v1.1

    First v3 measurement. Documented hard-block finding: stable Akamai 403 at homepage entry across every agent class (text, coding, all three standard browser runs, autonomous). No product, cart, or checkout interaction reachable. Five-Agents-Five-Answers passing 0/5, sub-pilot per G6. AI Visibility 35.0 (18/18 valid datapoints, 3 providers, DE). Shipped with confidence D (Pilot probe chip + noindex) — measured below the G6 threshold.

Sources

Evidence and provenance.

Public methodology references and internal evidence pointers behind every claim above.

  1. [S1]

    Gate-1 audit run · Adidas Wave Q2 2026

    Accessed · 23 May 2026

    Internal · Hyperize evidence

    • · AI Visibility score 35.0 (18/18 valid datapoints across 3 providers)
  2. [S2]

    Hyperize fleet · a fleet wave Consumer Retail (access profile)

    Accessed · 23 May 2026

    Internal · Hyperize evidence

    • · documented Akamai 403 hard-block at homepage entry across all measured agent classes
    • · Five-Agents-Five-Answers passing 0/5, sub_pilot true
    • · reference error 0.cad5ce17.1775309423.3d04a9b
  3. Accessed · 23 May 2026

    Public · hyperize.ai

    • · fairness declaration
    • · sub-pilot doctrine (G6)
Last updated · 23 May 2026 Next review · 30 Sept 2026 Wave · Q2-2026-W3-SLOW Tier · proprietary Confidence · D Index score · 3.4/10 Machine-readable record

Editorial coverage

The DAX 40 Agent Success Index is a point-in-time snapshot of the agent-success of public digital touchpoints. Results are not statements about product quality, company performance, service quality, or the legal obligations of the brands named. Brand names and logos remain the property of their respective owners and are used solely for identification and reporting purposes in the context of editorial coverage (§ 23 MarkenG, Art. 5 GG).

Brands wishing to respond, engage, or correct a factual error may contact hello@hyperize.ai. Responses received are published in full alongside the findings. Full methodology and editorial-coverage notice: coverage statement.