AI beauty recommendations trust media coverage, not brand content

A report from Avenue Z has found that beauty brands’ own website content and marketing materials play almost no role in whether AI tools recommend them to people using the tech for product discovery. 

According to the PR company, 96.1% of all AI beauty recommendation citations came from third-party sources, including editorial coverage, media mentions, and trusted reference sites. Brand-owned content, meanwhile, accounted for 3.9%.

Avenue Z, operating across fintech and agentic commerce, says that AI models are increasingly becoming the first stop consumers make when researching beauty products. The company states that brands that appear in these AI responses are gaining a significant competitive advantage.

“Beauty brands need to understand that AI visibility is not a content volume game; rather, it is a credibility game. AI visibility is being built through authority that exists beyond a brand’s own channels,” says Whitney Hart, chief strategy officer and director of the AI Lab at Avenue Z.

“Leaders are gaining ground because trusted third parties are consistently shaping how AI understands and recommends them. That is a very different playbook from traditional brand publishing, and it is quickly becoming a real competitive advantage.”

Avenue Z’s 2026 AI Visibility Index Beauty Report analyzed how ChatGPT recommends beauty brands to consumers. The research examined 60 major beauty brands across 565 AI citations and 75 consumer prompts, spanning cosmetics, hair care, and skin care. La Roche-Posay, CeraVe, and Olaplex emerged as frontrunners in beauty’s AI visibility.

Third-party sources account for 96.1% of citations used in AI beauty recommendations, according to Avenue Z.Editorial edge

The report found that consumers are rapidly adopting AI for product discovery. According to Avenue Z, ChatGPT had 400 million active weekly users in early 2025. The figure has now grown to over 900 million by early 2026.

The company says 73% of consumers now use generative AI for product research, representing a shift in consumer behavior that beauty brands cannot afford to ignore. 

According to the report, editorial publications accounted for 63.2% of AI citations. Allure, Vogue, and Glamour emerged as the most frequently referenced sources. The finding indicates that earned media makes up the primary signal of a brand’s perceived credibility and trustworthiness, regardless of how much content the brand publishes itself.

The report outlines that La Roche-Posay appeared in 16% of all the prompts it analyzed, capturing 6% of all brand mentions. Avenue Z attributes the L’Oréal-owned brand’s dominance to broad authority across multiple topic areas, rather than strength in one single category. 

CeraVe, which held the top position in last year’s report, slipped to second place for this year’s edition. The brand captured 5% of all brand mentions. Meanwhile, Olaplex rose from seventh place last year to third place this year.

Redken and Moroccan Oil were the runners-up, completing the top five ranking. According to Avenue Z, these five brands together accounted for 24% of the brands the AI tools cited. The company maintains that this finding is indicative of a small group beginning to separate itself from the rest of the market. 

Avenue Z adds that brands that are only mentioned intensely within one area or topic are less likely to capture AI visibility at scale.

Eavesdropping AI

Beyond topical considerations, the report found that AI models prefer to cite comparison articles over standard product descriptions. The tools are more likely, according to Avenue Z, to reference content that helps consumers evaluate their options and make informed decisions, rather than content that promotes a brand’s products. 

La Roche-Posay, CeraVe, and Olaplex emerged as the beauty brands with the strongest AI visibility on ChatGPT.Among user-generated content sources, Reddit emerged as the dominant platform cited by AI. The finding indicates that communal conversations and peer recommendations weigh heavily in AI’s trust assessments. 

Reigning robots 

As generative AI grows in adoption, an increasingly large portion of product discovery is beginning inside the tech interface, before users even reach a brand or retailer’s website.

Personal Care Insights previously spoke with Irina Mazur, chief commercial and marketing officer at Revieve, who told us that consumers are often engaging with AI tools earlier in their product discovery journey than they would traditionally engage with a brand or retailer.

“What’s different is that this ‘front door’ is conversational and dynamic, rather than navigational. Instead of browsing or searching, users are asking for guidance,” she said. 

Avenue Z’s analysis also found that the questions consumers ask AI tools map directly into the criteria buyers use to choose their products: price, features, reliability, service quality, reputation, and trust.

“If your brand is not being cited when consumers ask AI which options are most trusted, most affordable, or best aligned to their needs, you are missing an increasingly important layer of consideration,” the report reads.

The company advises that brands monitor whether they show up in AI conversations and make the necessary adjustments to their online engagement strategies before AI visibility becomes a standard industry performance indicator.