How Beauty Brands Win in 2026

If you work in beauty, your 2026 planning deck probably looks slightly unhinged.

On one slide, you have Rhode heading into Sephora, immersive pop ups, AR mirrors and AI skin diagnostics. On the next, TikTok Shop is now the UK’s fourth-largest beauty retailer, with roughly one beauty product sold every second.

Then you get to the media plan and most of the budget quietly goes back into bottom-of-funnel performance. Not because you do not believe in brand, creators or experiences, but because the numbers you trust still undervalue them.

Fospha’s latest State of Beauty data puts it pretty bluntly. Last click captures about 13% of beauty’s true cross channel revenue. YouTube can be undervalued by up to 98%. Meta only sees roughly 32% of its real impact reflected. When the dashboard only rewards what happens at the very bottom of the funnel, spend follows, even if it starves the activity that actually creates future demand.

So how do you build a 2026 beauty plan that leans into TikTok Shop, Sephora, AI and creators without losing your CFO? Here is a practical playbook.

1. Map the 2026 beauty battlefield

Think about beauty in 2026 as one continuous journey that plays out across four overlapping arenas.

Experiential retail 2.0

Beauty retail has turned into theater. Pop ups and flagships are full experiences, with themed spaces, gamified installs and social friendly design. Sephora, Ulta and specialty chains treat stores as content engines as much as sales channels. This is where memory is created, and where your digital media is supposed to show up as real people walking into real stores.

Social commerce and TikTok Shop

TikTok has gone from dance challenges to serious retail. Creator led demos, GRWMs and live shopping drive direct sales on TikTok Shop. Viral products then spill into search demand, Amazon baskets and Sephora wish lists. TikTok, Instagram, YouTube Shorts and Pinterest video are now media channels, storefronts and focus groups at the same time.

Marketplaces and retail media

For many beauty brands, Amazon, Boots, Lookfantastic and other retailers carry more P and L weight than DTC. TikTok Shop is now in that mix.

Retail media and sponsored placements mean your ad could run on Amazon, be triggered by TikTok hype and close a sale that actually started with a YouTube review. Most of that path is invisible in last click reports.

AI powered personalization and virtual try on

AI and AR are now part of the core experience. Virtual try ons sit across web, apps and in store mirrors. Shade matching, regimen builders and diagnostic tools quietly lift conversion and basket size.

These moments live early in the journey, at discovery and reassurance. The sale often lands somewhere else, like marketplaces, TikTok Shop or a physical retailer.

Net result. Your customer moves fluidly between mall, mobile and marketplace. Your budget is still anchored to whatever ad got the last click.

2. Recognize the BOF trap

Here is the loop many beauty brands are stuck in:

• Legacy measurement undervalues impressions led, demand generating channels
• Upper funnel activity looks inefficient on paper
• Budgets shift to short term capture
• CAC rises, long term growth stalls

In beauty, this hurts more than in most categories because:

• You depend heavily on visual storytelling and creators, which sit higher in the funnel
• You sell across multiple endpoints, from TikTok Shop and Amazon to Sephora, DTC and pharmacy
• Retailers and platforms can quickly amplify or kill a product based on trends

The goal for 2026 is not to abandon performance or ignore ROAS. It is to stop letting last click dictate the entire budget.

3. Treat platforms as growth engines

Each major platform is an opportunity for growth:

• Google and YouTube are where shoppers research routines, ingredients and reviews. Search and Shopping capture intent. YouTube builds it. Brand Lift, conversion modeling and data driven attribution help you see impact beyond the last click.
• Meta, Instagram and Facebook are still the backbone for creator content, social proof and community. Shops, Advantage Plus, Reels and click to DM blur brand and performance. Lift studies and clean room integrations give you incrementality reads.
• TikTok combines discovery, hype and purchase in one feed. TikTok Shop is both a media format and a checkout. Live shopping and creator collabs can be read through native tools, MMM and external partners.
• Pinterest and Reddit shape plans and opinions. Pinterest is where looks and routines are mapped. Reddit hosts unfiltered feedback and routine breakdowns that push branded search and retail demand.

Independent measurement partners like Fospha sit on top of this ecosystem, not against it. They stitch together platform, web and commerce data, including Amazon and TikTok Shop, to show the halo across channels.

4. A practical 2026 playbook for beauty CMOs

Start with journeys, not channels: Sketch three real customer journeys for your brand. Creator to marketplace, AI assisted to DTC, mall anchored to online top up. Then ask where you are spending and where you are actually measuring. The gaps become your test plan.

Rebalance 5 to 15 percent of budget up funnel: Ringfence a small share of performance spend and move it into creator content, Pinterest inspiration and AI or AR experiences. Tie each move to a clear hypothesis and a time bound test.

Measure the halo, especially on Amazon and TikTok Shop: Use platform tools, then layer in independent measurement to model the uplift that upper funnel media drives on marketplaces and retail.

Build a measurement spine your CFO trusts: Stack platform native tools, experiments and independent attribution. Report back on a short set of finance friendly metrics, incremental revenue, CAC, LTV and payback window.

Use measurement to de risk bold ideas, not to sand them down until everything looks the same.

5. Do not let measurement kill the fun

Creator led brands like Rhode are scaling off distinctive aesthetics and community, not just cheap clicks. Pop ups, AR mirrors and immersive retail give people stories they want to share, which then feed the algorithms you buy against. Use measurement to de risk bold ideas, not to sand everything down until it looks the same.

Most beauty brands are not under investing in upper funnel because they do not believe in it. They are under investing because their systems only reward what happens at the bottom.

The real 2026 question is not “Can we afford to move money up the funnel?” It is “Can we afford to keep starving the channels that create our next wave of demand?”