Key Takeaways:

• Brands must integrate data and marketing across all platforms to reach always-online beauty consumers.
• Ulta’s new platform lets brands tap its 45M members through smart PDPs, pricing, and placements.
• ChatGPT’s Shopify and PayPal integrations open new sales channels, boosting discovery but needing optimization.

Beauty consumers are always online, from ChatGPT, Ulta Beauty (UB) Marketplace, and TikTok Shop to Amazon, Pinterest, and Reddit. But how do brands reach the constantly connected shopper where she is—being everything, everywhere, all at once?

In this age of forever scrolling and rapid content consumption, a beauty consumer might see a product recommended on ChatGPT and ultimately buy it on UB Marketplace. But if a brand’s retail channels are siloed, this lack of integration means money spent in one channel is rarely measured against sales impact in another.

Brands need to take a full-funnel marketing approach further by controlling the upper levers of the funnel and integrating every channel into a centralized data platform. Without this connectivity, a brand can become stagnant, viewing its strategies and data through tunnel vision, leading to incomplete reporting and slower growth.

Think of Navigo Marketing as the connective thread between every retail media network (RMN), enabling the connected consumer to have a seamless buying experience that translates into conversions amplified by streamlined data.

Open(ish) Market

In October 2025, Ulta Beauty launched its UB Marketplace with a curated group of 100 brands not previously sold on Ulta Beauty. This new digital commerce platform is embedded in Ulta.com and enables Ulta Beauty to scale with agility, test trends with lower risk, and get ahead of viral trends. Brands chosen for UB Marketplace can tap into the wealth of the Ulta Beauty Rewards Program, which is almost 45 million members strong as of Q1 of 2025. With 95% of Ulta Beauty’s sales coming from rewards members, membership definitely has its privileges for brands.

“We are already starting to see good results with our first launched brand in the UB Marketplace,” said Navigo Marketing CEO Jacob St. John. “We are waiting and ready for Ulta Beauty to make advertising available to the marketplace brands as well.”

Once a brand secures a coveted invitation to participate in UB Marketplace, carefully curating hero products is vital to success. “The $20 to $40 range continues to dominate,” St. John said. “Minis, bundles, and dermatologist-backed SKUs outperform because they check the right boxes.”

St. John also stressed the importance of a brand’s Product Detail Page (PDP) strategy and the need to differentiate from its DTC PDPs. “What wins on Ulta.com is not what wins on DTC. Your product detail page has to work harder. Above-the-fold value, second image trust builders, review visibility, and simple problem-solution copy all matter. A pretty page won’t move a SKU. A strategic one will.”

Leveling up sponsored placement is also vital to success on UB Marketplace, according to St. John. Think launch sequencing, paid search aligned to high-volume terms, and conversion-focused creative that speaks to the Ulta Beauty shopper. “Sponsored placement is not just about showing up—it’s about pulling carts through.”

St. John also advises brands to be smart about pricing. “We’ve seen time and again that absolute price beats unit economics. Shoppers are not calculating cost per ounce. They’re reacting to the number on the tag. Brands that can package value below the psychological ceiling will win early velocity.”

Game Changer Incoming

Since September 2025, when OpenAI announced its first steps towards agentic commerce by integrating ChatGPT with Shopify, St. John and his team have fielded calls from brands eager to set up Instant Checkout, which lets consumers discover and purchase product recommendations directly within ChatGPT.

Only US-based Shopify merchants can participate in Instant Checkout, but Shopify powers around 12% of all US e-commerce, serving 875 million shoppers in 2024. Overall, Shopify merchants have generated more than $1.1 trillion in revenue.

Stores must also have Shopify Payments (Stripe) enabled for processing. After approval, a brand’s Shopify catalog will sync with ChatGPT, making products eligible for surfacing in search and checkout.

In late October 2025, OpenAI also announced its partnership with PayPal, expanding payments and commerce in ChatGPT. According to a PayPal press release, 400 million shoppers utilize PayPal to shop.

Navigo Marketing is already actively connecting brands to ChatGPT Instant Checkout. Still, early results show that these platforms are great for discoverability but convert at a much lower rate than higher-intent traffic, like Google, according to St. John.

If a brand is interested in integrating with ChatGPT Instant Checkout, St. John advises checking eligibility, applying via this link, and working with Navigo to optimize product SEO.

For brands concerned about their DTC business, St. John assuaged their fears: “ChatGPT shopping is an additional sales channel, not a replacement.”

By seamlessly unifying ChatGPT, UB Marketplace, Amazon, Sephora, TikTok, Meta, and beyond, brands can control every step of the purchasing process while building awareness, nurturing intent, and driving purchase across channels.