By Mieke Meintjes
Social media and AI-powered tools are changing the way beauty consumers find brands. Online platforms such as ChatGPT, TikTok, and Reddit are moving into the spotlight, and businesses that fail to adapt their discovery strategies beyond Google may risk becoming “invisible.”
According to Spate’s September 2025 report, generative AI search has “transformed information discovery,” as it yields results as fast as traditional Google search, but presents the results and potential follow-ups like a conversation.
Recognizing this shift, performance marketing agency Iced Media has launched a search and discovery practice to help beauty and wellness brands stay visible amid the changing marketing landscape.
“Younger consumers, millennials, Gen Z, and even Gen Alpha, now treat platforms like TikTok, Reddit, and YouTube as their primary search engines, valuing authenticity, social proof, and edutainment over traditional results. Today, there are four billion daily searches on TikTok alone,” Emily Rose Campbell, head of performance at Iced Media, tells Personal Care Insights.
“ChatGPT and other large language models (LLMs) have rapidly reshaped how people of all ages search and discover information. There are 700 million weekly searchers on ChatGPT.”
