Category: The Latest Look

Over the years, how consumers have discovered brands has changed significantly. Historically, department store counters, word of mouth and magazines were the go-to sources for discovering brands and products. Over the years, we’ve seen the shift to digital and the importance that search, social media and influencers play in brand discovery and new customer acquisition.

YouTube and TikTok, in particular, changed the way customers consume content and find new products. Replacing more traditional intent-based searches with highly personalised and entertainment-driven algorithms that turn scrollers into buyers. The hashtag #TikTokMadeMeBuyIt has had over 74 billion views, and with 89% of TikTok users having bought a beauty product after seeing it in the app, this shows a major shift in consumer behaviour.

More recently, with the rise of AI, we’re seeing another big shift. AI is impacting every touch point of the consumer journey, determining which brands are being seen, who gets trusted and who wins the sale.

AI is now influencing where and how brands are being discovered

Before AI, brand awareness came from ads, organic social or SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages). Consumers would search using short form specific queries, about a brand, a specific ingredient or a skincare concern, but nowadays, searches are becoming more conversational. Long tail phrases and questions are consumers’ preferred way to use search engines.

These results show up in the form of AI summaries, through ChatGPT answers and through visual search too (Google Lens usage is +400% since 2021), and while this represents a big opportunity for brand discovery, we are seeing a negative impact on the number of visitors to websites, through traffic.

Bain research shows that 80% of consumers rely on these summaries, and these result in what’s known as “zero clicks”, at least 40% of the time. Something that brands need to be mindful of- while it’s not necessarily bad, in fact, your content might be doing better than your analytics suggests, brands do need to adapt their search strategies to match this shift in behaviour.

How to get your brand showing up in AI

We have a dedicated blog on how to get your brand showing up in AI overviews, but with AI, getting your brand discovered has actually never been easier. You don’t need big budgets, big websites with big inventories, or a big brand name to get featured.

AI serves up results based on educational and authoritative content. This represents a huge opportunity for smaller, emerging brands that will naturally have all the credibility and authenticity on their site already. With a little content optimisation and Digital PR support, small brands are just as likely to appear as big high street names.

The new customer journey

The customer journey today is far from linear; the journey is messier, with customers often going back and forth between phases. Customers are more likely to discover a brand based on an AI recommendation, and they’ll then use social platforms like TikTok and Instagram to research the brand and validate it through social proof, like UGC and reviews.

Following that, consumers typically go on to Google to do a deep dive on the ingredients and their associated benefits and price comparisons. Once they’re ready to start thinking about purchasing, that’s when your brands credibilty matter the most. Ways that support that final conversion include having an expert voice or founder credibility to tip the scale towards conversion.

But even then, when and where the customer converts is not definitive or clean cut.

Beauty brands need to show up consistently across all these touchpoints in the journey to be in with a chance of closing a new customer acquisition sale, or risk being filtered out of the race entirely.

The messy middle just got messier

This new customer journey was coined as Google’s messy middle. We have a blog deep diving into the topic, but basically, it is a new adaptation of the consumer funnel. Instead of a neat, linear funnel, people loop- researching, comparing, validating, and reconsidering multiple times before committing to a purchase. Especially in beauty.

That middle has always been messy, but AI has made it even messier. AI now acts as a really strong influencer, doing so by recommending brands early in the discovery phase, answering questions effectively, reinforcing bias (social proof and authority) and reducing consumer effort when it comes to researching – all of which are pertinent when it comes to beauty brand discovery.

What should beauty brands do to make sure they’re visible

For beauty brands, this means that to succeed, they need to be consistently visible across all touchpoints. Nowadays, it’s not about shouting the loudest but more about being the most credible. Because of this, investing in your content that builds authority and digital PR to reference your content and link to your site has never been more important.

Securing features in relevant publications to your brand through digital PR best practices and creating expert-led content that answers real customer questions is the best way to help your brand show up in AI recommendations and make your brand discoverable.

As a leading beauty and wellness marketing agency, we’ve helped our clients secure features in the likes of Vogue, Elle and Refinery29 in just a matter of weeks. We’d love to do the same for your brand. If you’d like to speak to a member of our team to discuss how you can improve and optimise your content for AI, or need help securing top-tier beauty publications, we’d love to hear from you.

In the last few months we’ve seen some pretty major announcements in the world of AI and ecommerce. First ChatGPT’s instant checkout, more recently Google’s announcement about their Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP), and now ChatGPT have just announced the introduction of advertising in ChatGPT.

Interestingly it was only two years ago that Sam Altman, founder and CEO of OpenAI, considered the place of ads in ChatGPT to be a “last resort”. Quite the change of direction given they’re now testing paid advertisements in AI conversions.

For beauty brands and beauty marketers, this marks a major new platform which we have to play, work and/or contend with! It leverages a totally new way to reach and interact with engaged, ready to buy customers, in a very personal and targeted way.

In this post we’ll summarise everything you need to know from announcement, we’ll take a look at what these ads could look like and give you key takeaways for your beauty brand.

Combating trust concerns

OpenAI addresses the immediate concerns users will have with this announcement. “If businesses can pay for the answers, can I trust what I’m reading?” It’s a difficult question but one that needs answering if growth in LLM adoption is to continue when ads go live. Particularly within beauty, trust and credibility is such an important leverage for brands. If handled incorrectly, beauty brands could lose this and with it, their following and what keeps the brand authentic.

Testing will initially roll out on the free and “Go” tiers, so not impacting paid, pro or business users. Testing will initially launch in the U.S with a view to rolling out new countries in the future, and importantly, they have stated that they “will not show ads in accounts where the user tells us or we predict that they are under 18, and ads are not eligible to appear near sensitive or regulated topics like health, mental health or politics.”

To combat the concern of loss of trust within the platform, OpenAI have outlined five ad principles that are aimed at keeping the trust between human and AI. They are:

Mission alignment:

OpenAI are consistent with their mission statement being to “ensure AGI benefits all of humanity” – as they introduce Paid Ads into their ecosystem.

For beauty brands, this means AI ads should prioritise helping people make better decisions about their skin, hair, or makeup, for example, guiding someone with sensitive skin away from harsh products, even if those products are higher margin.

Answer independence:

Adverts will not influence the answers ChatGPT gives the users. Answers will continue to be “optimised based on what’s most helpful to you.”

If a user asks, “What’s the best routine for rosacea-prone skin?”, AI answers should provide gentle, evidence-based guidance, even if that means recommending fewer products (or none at all), rather than steering the answer toward a skincare brand advertising on the platform.

Conversation privacy:

Conversations will not be shared with advertisers, and they will never sell your data to advertisers.

This is especially important in beauty, where users may share photos, insecurities, or concerns like acne or hair loss and knowing these conversations remain private builds the confidence required to engage honestly with AI tools.

Choice and control:

Users will have control over how their data is used, including the ability to turn off personalisation and clear ad-related data at any time.

As a consumer, you should be able to explore foundation shade matching or skincare advice without being permanently targeted related ads. This gives users back control and helps beauty brands feel like they’re supporting their customers rather than intruding.

Long-term value:

The platform is not and will be continued to not be optimised for time spent in ChatGPT. User experience will be prioritised over revenue.

For beauty marketers, this signals a shift toward quality interactions over volume. It shows us that a single, trusted AI recommendation that genuinely works for someone’s skin can be more valuable than repeated exposure to aggressive or irrelevant ads.

How will it work?

In the announcement, OpenAI shared a snippet of how these adverts may look. As we’re only just entering the Beta testing phase, it’s best to take these ideas and screenshots with a big pinch of salt. 

Firstly, ads in ChatGPT will be clearly highlighted. As stated by ChatGPT: “when there’s a relevant sponsored product or service based on your current a conversation, ads will be clearly labelled and separated from the organic answer.”  

You’ll also be able to learn more about why you’re seeing certain ads just like we see on other popular ad platforms now. We can assume it’s in this section of the user experience that you’ll be able to manage your data and make the choice if you want to see less of those sorts of adverts there. But we won’t know this for sure until this is rolled out further. 

We did get a peek into where they want to see this going after testing, and the default static advert is not where they see this integration stopping. They want the ad experience in AI to not just inform a user, but to be more helpful and relevant than any other digital adverts out there.  

The example they gave was “soon you might see an ad and be able to directly ask the questions you need to make a purchase decision.”  

If the search ads we know lets us buy visibility on a results page, ChatGPT ads look to let you buy a place in the answers themselves. 

Here’s how it could work. Imagine a user asking ChatGPT to build a routine for adult acne and sensitive skin. Rather than just being served a static banner for a cleanser, ChatGPT ads envision a brand’s product appearing in a paid for placement within the response, alongside ingredient education and routine guidance, with the user able to ask follow-up questions such as “How should I use it in my routine?” or “Is it suitable for dry skin?” 

In this example, the ad is no longer just about awareness, it has become part of the decision-making process itself – the brand isn’t simply buying space on a page, as with traditional search ads, it is buying a role within the answer, where trust and relevance matter far more than the creative impact. 

This marks a fundamental shift from search advertising as we know it. Where search ads allow beauty brands to compete for placement around results, ChatGPT ads could allow brands to participate within the answers that consumers are already seeking, effectively turning ads into a consultative moment. For beauty, a category built on expertise and authenticity, this could be incredibly powerful, but also raises the bar: brands will be judged not just on how compelling their message is, but on how genuinely helpful their presence is. As powerful as this could be, a mis-placed foot could be detrimental for a brands credibility. If a brand positions itself in a way that feels too sales-y, or irrelevant, it risks breaking trust at a crucial moment, a mistake that could be fatal for long-term brand credibility. 

Our thoughts on the ChatGPT ad announcement

Okay, so what does an experienced paid media advertiser think about all this excitement?  

Will we have enough information on the users we’re sharing these adverts with?  

Probably not, if, as Open AI have stated, that they will only be showing adverts to people that have free or Go plans, will advertisers have enough information to segment audiences to show them targeted adverts? 

It’ll be interesting to see the level of detail they have about users on free and Go tiers vs paid. Paid tier advertising would LIKELY be more favourable to advertisers as CGPT would hold much more information about those people. 

Will we be able to see impressions, click-through-rates (CTR) and other data points to understand the effectiveness of our ads? 

At its current stage, we don’t know.  

You would like to assume that yes, advertisers need to be able to see what their money is being spent on, but Open AI are saying in this statement that conversations will remain between user and chat bot. The level of detail to be shared with advertisers is yet to be seen. 

It’ll be really, interesting to see how this evolves as advertisers demand more insights. I.e. it’s reasonable from an advertiser’s perspective to expect to see “which searches/keywords/phrases drove impressions/clicks/traffic” (like we would expect from paid search or even organic search!) as well as some initially basic level of demographic and location targeting.  

Measurement is getting increasingly more difficult, through cookie depreciation and regional privacy regulations. A new channel with its own nuance will certainly add an interesting challenge. 

How do I think their dedication to privacy will pan out? 

I appreciate ChatGPT’s commitment to privacy but equally, they’re going to find it a bit chicken and egg when fighting advertiser expectations and in reporting. Proving that ChatGPT is driving value so that advertisers continue to give them money will be difficult without that key information. 

Where will OpenAI’s principle of “not selling your data” end?  What is the definition here, is using the information you provide to assist paid targeting not selling it? 

It’s still early days

With regards to when, the announcement has been pretty vague about timings but we imagine it will be happening sooner rather than later. OpenAI’s statement says that they are “starting from the ground up” so this could mean that there’s no platform yet.  

We think that testing will roll out to other countries outside of the US later this year and if adoption is strong, we predict we could even see a self-service ad platform by the end of the year. 

Along with our SEO team, we’re keeping our ear to the ground – we are seeing AI SEO, GEO – whatever you want to call it – growing in their domain. It will be very interesting to see how these policies evolve as they start raking in billions from advertisers! 

For smaller beauty brands, this represents a huge opportunity to get ahead of big beauty brands, who take longer to make decisions as they typically have more red tape to get through. Being the first to adopt new platforms like this is more often a cost effective way to grow market share and build brand awareness before the big brands jump in and push up costs.  

If you’re running performance marketing in the UK, we’d recommend reserving some budget for testing this later in the year (if you haven’t already). 

Our paid media teams have already mocked out test scenarios with some of our clients so that, as and when access opens up, we can be one of the first ones on the platform.  

If you’re interested in working with Foundation- specialists in beauty marketing, get in touch with one of our team today, we’d love to chat and discuss how we can grow your brand.