Key Takeaways:
While walking the show floor at ShopTalk last week in Las Vegas, a clear set of themes emerged across conversations, keynotes, and panel discussions, all pointing in the same direction: the traditional consumer journey from discovery to purchase has been fundamentally turned on its head.
For years, brands operated within a relatively predictable system: drive awareness, secure distribution, convert at retail or DTC. That system has become fragmented. Discovery is happening across platforms simultaneously. Creators are moving closer to the point of sale. Artificial intelligence is reshaping how consumers search, and how brands are matched to them. And direct-to-consumer channels, once viewed primarily as growth engines, are being redefined as places to build customer relationships and collect crucial zero-party data.
The path to purchase has not disappeared, but it has become harder to define—and harder for any single player to control. For beauty brands, that shift introduces both complexity and opportunity.
Conversations with executives from TikTok, Google, and Postscript point to a broader transition: from managing channels to building systems. The brands that adapt fastest will be those that can connect an increasingly fragmented set of touchpoints into a coherent, consumer-led strategy. Three priorities are emerging for beauty brands: capturing discovery, owning the customer relationship, and redefining measurement.
1. The Funnel Has Collapsed
The conventional path from awareness to purchase no longer reflects how consumers behave. “Consumers are searching, streaming, scrolling, shopping… in not any form of a linear fashion whatsoever,” said Courtney Rose, Vice President of Retail at Google.
Discovery now happens everywhere—and often simultaneously. A product might be surfaced through a creator, researched via search, revisited on social, and ultimately purchased somewhere else entirely. TikTok’s latest data underscores the scale of that shift. In 2025, the platform saw “103+ billion searches with e-commerce intent in the US” and “89% YoY growth in searches with purchase intent.”
Takeaway: Brands must move beyond funnel-based thinking and design for continuous discovery, showing up across platforms where consumers are simultaneously exploring, researching, and buying.
2. AI Expands the Field—It Doesn’t Replace It
The rise of generative AI has raised questions about whether traditional marketing channels will lose relevance. So far, the evidence points in the opposite direction.
Search behavior is becoming more conversational and more detailed, providing platforms with richer signals about intent. Consumers are increasingly expressing not just what they want, but why they want it and how they intend to use it.
“It’s an expansionary moment,” Rose said, noting that brands now have “more opportunities to be discovered and … to drive purchase.”
For beauty, where context (skin type, condition, occasion) often shapes purchase decisions, that shift is particularly significant.
Takeaway: In a world where AI is increasingly being integrated into discovery and purchase decisions, brands must optimize for intent—not keywords—by structuring content and product information to align with how consumers naturally describe their needs, use cases, and concerns.
3. Creators Move Closer to the Point of Sale
If discovery is becoming more diffused, creators are playing a more central role in how it converts. TikTok reported “146% YoY growth in creators earning commissions” and said “nearly 20,000 creators” are now driving six-figure sales. Individual videos, the company said, can generate “$200K+ in sales for a brand.”
Google is investing in a similar dynamic through YouTube, where creators are “98% more likely to be trusted,” according to Rose.
The shift is not just about influence. Creators are increasingly functioning as a layer of commerce—curating, recommending, and, in some cases, directly driving transactions.
Takeaway: Brands must treat creators as a core commerce channel—not just a marketing lever—by structuring partnerships that enable direct conversion, not just awareness.
4. A Return to DTC . . . on Different Terms
At the same time, some brands are placing renewed emphasis on direct-to-consumer channels, not as a primary growth lever, but as a means of control.
“We’re starting to see this resurgence of people being focused on their DTC,” said Adam Turner, co-founder and Chief Executive of Postscript.
The reasoning is pragmatic. Retail distribution is crowded, and digital acquisition across platforms is increasingly complex. DTC remains one of the few environments where brands can control both the experience and the data, and that data is increasingly being used for everything from product development to marketing.
Takeaway: Smart brands are repositioning DTC from a pure acquisition channel to a control layer, prioritizing ownership of customer experience and data to inform retention, product development, and long-term growth.
5. Commerce Becomes Conversational
For many brands, particularly in beauty, the next competitive layer is not reach but interaction.
“That type of interaction is missing for probably 80% of brands on DTC right now,” Turner said.
The emerging model relies on messaging—SMS, social channel DMs, and customer service tools—and AI-driven agents to replicate elements of the in-store experience. Rather than one-way communication, these tools enable ongoing dialogue.
“Messaging isn’t just a marketing channel … it’s like the sales associate that helped me choose my product last time, and that helps build trust, conversion, and retention,” Turner said. This is particularly the case in categories where guidance plays a central role.
As commerce becomes more conversational, the nature of customer data is also changing. Instead of relying primarily on structured inputs like quizzes or predefined attributes, brands are beginning to capture more nuanced insights through direct interaction.
“It’s the voice of the customer … but at a massive scale,” Turner said.
That data reflects not only what customers buy, but why they buy it, what concerns they have, and how those needs evolve over time. For brands, this zero-party data offers a more detailed view of demand—one that can inform everything from marketing to product development.
Takeaway: Brands must invest in conversational infrastructure, across SMS, messaging, and AI agents, to replicate the in-store advisory experience and turn one-way marketing into ongoing customer dialogue.
6. Measurement Is More Complex
As the path to purchase becomes less linear, attribution becomes more difficult to define.
Marketers are increasingly supplementing traditional attribution models with approaches such as incrementality testing and Marketing Mix Modeling (MMM) in an effort to better understand the broader impact of their spending.
The focus, Rose said, is on determining whether investments are “driving incremental sales” rather than relying solely on direct attribution.
For many organizations, that shift requires both new tools and a change in mindset.
Takeaway: Brands must shift from attribution to impact, prioritizing incrementality and full-funnel measurement over deterministic tracking.
7. The Consumer Moves to the Center
Across these shifts—fragmentation, AI-driven discovery, creator influence, and conversational commerce—a common thread emerges: the consumer plays a more central role in the journey than ever before.
Consumers are interacting with brands in more fluid, less predictable ways, and expecting those brands to respond accordingly. “Never has the consumer been more at the center of the conversation,” Rose said. For beauty companies, the challenge is not simply adapting to new channels, but integrating them, linking discovery, engagement, and conversion into a system that reflects how consumers actually behave.
Takeaway: Brands must reorganize around the consumer—not channels—by integrating discovery, engagement, and conversion into a unified system that reflects how people actually shop.
What emerged from this year’s ShopTalk—and from conversations with executives at TikTok, Google, and Postscript—is not a single trend, but a convergence. Discovery, influence, conversion to purchase, and retention are no longer distinct stages; they are collapsing into a more fluid, interconnected system, and that requires a different approach from brands. That approach must acknowledge that beauty commerce is shifting from just distribution to endless opportunities for customer interaction.
The companies that win will not be those that optimize individual tactics and channels, but those that can re-architect how they operate: integrating discovery across platforms, building direct relationships through conversation, and using data not just to target customers, but to understand them in real time.
The question is no longer where to show up, but how to connect it all.
