/ commerce graphAI-to-retail routing intelligence · for consumer brands with DTC + retail
When AI recommends your category, who gets the cart?
Aqxle traces every AI citation through the publisher page, the affiliate wrapper and the commission rail to the merchant that actually took the order — then ranks the placements to fix by preferred-channel capture and margin at risk. In prestige beauty, 78% of AI-cited clicks land on Amazon, Sephora, Ulta or Nordstrom. Not on the brand.
Works with the Profound, Semrush, Similarweb or Ahrefs data you already pay for. No tags. No pixels. No platform replacement.
02 · Sample deliverable
What a capture review actually tells you.
One category, one brand, four competitors. Every AI-cited page resolved through its commercial links to the final merchant, scored against the destinations you actually prefer. Below: findings from our published prestige beauty benchmark.
of resolved AI-cited beauty clicks land on Amazon, Sephora, Ulta or Nordstrom
Not on the brand's own site — even in prestige beauty, where MAP enforcement is supposed to suppress marketplace routing.
of resolved affiliate links reached any prestige brand's own site
Across 401 resolved links, MAC.com was the only DTC destination appearing at volume. NARS, Charlotte Tilbury, Pat McGrath and Hourglass routed entirely through marketplaces.
MAC's direct capture vs NARS's, same publisher, same category
Two brands with comparable AI visibility, a 53-point gap in who takes the cart. The difference is placement format: MAC holds a dedicated roundup, NARS appears only as an in-article mention.
Observed: link paths, affiliate wrappers, merchant destinations. Modeled: value at risk, shown as a low/base/high range with published assumptions. We label which is which.
Methodology: independent public benchmark analysis using syndicated third-party data. No client endorsement implied. Your audit is delivered privately. We publish benchmarks, never client diagnostics.
03 · Built for one job, and one buyer
Built for one job, and one buyer.
If your category has one route to purchase, you do not need us. Aqxle earns its fee where demand can land in four different places.
This is for you if:
- You run ecommerce, digital commerce or DTC P&L at a consumer brand doing $100M–$2B
- You sell through your own site AND Amazon AND at least two specialty or big-box retailers
- You have an active affiliate or digital PR program
- Someone has asked you what AI search is doing to your channel mix, and the honest answer is that nobody knows
- You already pay for an AI visibility tracker and it still cannot tell you what share of your AI-cited demand ends up at amazon.com versus your own site
This is not for you if:
- You are DTC-only with no retail or marketplace presence
- You are B2B SaaS or a local service business
- You have exclusive-retail distribution you cannot change
- You want prompt tracking and mention share — buy Semrush or Profound, they are better at it and cheaper
- You want a dashboard rather than a decision
Who we talk to
Economic buyer
VP Ecommerce · VP Digital Commerce · GM DTC · Chief Digital Officer
Owns the channel mix question.
Problem owner
Director of SEO / Organic Growth / GEO / Digital Shelf
Sees the citations, cannot change the routing.
Action owner
Director of Affiliate & Partnerships · Digital PR · Retail Media
Makes the fix once the gap is named.
Want this for your brand?
Book a 20-minute capture review.
04 · Intelligence library
One link chain, resolved. Every Friday.
Independent benchmark analysis of AI-to-retail routing intelligence — who captures the margin when AI sends a buyer to your category. Published teardowns are archived below; the weekly issue resolves one link chain at a time.
Subscribe on LinkedInNot on LinkedIn? Read on LinkedIn or email hello@aqxle.ai to be added to the email list.
Beauty retail
07Publisher · Backlink Intelligence
Sephora vs. Ulta: Earned authority vs. rented authority
Sephora carries 1.76x more referring domains — but composition is the real story. 87.6% of Ulta's top-authority links are affiliate and deal sites; 31.5% of Sephora's are earned influencer coverage, the inventory AI engines cite.
Prestige beauty
01Publisher · Beauty
How Beauty Routes AI Citations: MAC vs. NARS
We traced 211,898 affiliate links on Beauty.com. MAC captures 73% DTC in roundups. NARS routes 60% through Nordstrom. The difference is placement format, not spend.
Consumer tech
02Publisher · Laptop
Where Do Laptop's Citations Actually Go?
We audited 1.85M outbound links on the most AI-cited laptop publisher. The most-cited laptop brand barely appears on the site. Only 35 links go direct to a brand.
Running shoes
03Publisher · Runner's World / RunRepeat
Editorial-First vs Pure-Affiliate
Runner's World keeps 87% of clicks inside the Hearst graph. RunRepeat sends 98% out via Awin, Partnerize, CJ, Impact. Same category, two brand playbooks.
Retail strategy
04Backlink Intelligence
Walmart vs. Target: Opposite digital PR and affiliate playbooks
Two retail giants, two completely different ways of earning links, distributing affiliate revenue, and shaping the SERPs that brands compete on.
Travel rewards credit card
05Publisher · NerdWallet
Citi Strata Converts Best, Wins Least
NerdWallet is Citi's #1 cited AI source and #1 referral-traffic driver (46.8K/mo). Yet Strata Premier holds just 11.2% of mentions there — highest conversion efficiency (124) on the shelf, but lowest head-to-head win rate (25%). Closing the mention gap nets ~10x.
Cross-category synthesis
06Publisher · LinkedIn · Bharad Ramesh
6 Tear-Downs, 5 Learnings, 3 Things CMOs Should Do Next
AI search didn't kill the funnel — it moved the bottom into a hidden content-to-commerce graph of publishers, affiliate stacks, and marketplaces. Six teardowns across beauty, laptops, running, travel rewards, and big retail reveal the shared patterns and what CMOs should do next.
05 · How it works
Six layers. One question: where does the demand actually land?
Powered by Profound, Gumshoe, SEMrush — or your stack
Visibility share
Share of voice on AI answer pages across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Claude.
Citation sources
Which URLs the model picked — and which it ignored.
Prompt intent
Research, comparison, deals, purchase. TOFU / MOFU / BOFU split.
URL-level crawl
What each cited page links out to — Amazon, affiliate networks, retailers, DTC.
Path resolution
Where every commercial link finally lands. Affiliate redirect resolved, commission rail tagged.
Merchant Resolution
Final merchant named, commission rail tagged, destination scored against your preferred-channel list.
You tell us which destinations you prefer. Amazon is not automatically leakage — a wholesale sale can be the better sale. We measure preferred-destination capture, not DTC ideology.
We ingest visibility data from AI monitoring platforms — Profound, Gumshoe, and SEMrush today, or whatever you already run — crawl what AI-cited pages link out to (Amazon, retailers, DTC, affiliate networks), and apply the Aqxle Path Resolution layer to see where every commercial link finally lands and which commission rail captured it. We're provider-agnostic by design and constantly testing new sources — if you've already standardized on a tracker, we plug into it instead of asking you to switch.
Aqxle sits on top of your existing stack — no tags, pixels, or rip-and-replace required.
06 · Built for enterprise-grade brands
Sits on top of your existing stack.
We're not wedded to any single provider — we're always testing new ones, and we integrate with what you've already paid for.
Earlier Aqxle insights-automation product, 2025. Not Commerce Graph customers.
Founder & analytics pedigree
Connect on LinkedInBharad Ramesh built the ROI-proof and investment analytics function behind $1B+ media portfolios at WPP Media and PHD Media, and has served on the boards of the MRC, CIMM and the 4As. A WPP Atticus Award winner for thought leadership.
He is Founder & CEO of Aqxle AI.
The Commerce Graph methodology is built from decades of work in media measurement, routing intelligence, and investment optimization for global brands.
07 · The offer
The offer
Design Partner Audit
First 3 brands only$5,000
15 business days
- One brand, four competitors, one US category
- 100 high-intent prompts across up to four answer engines
- Top 50 AI-influential cited pages
- Up to 1,500 unique commercial links resolved to final merchant
- Merchant and affiliate-network map
- Your preferred destinations and contribution assumptions applied
- Low / base / high modeled value-at-risk range
- 10 prioritized publisher, affiliate and retail actions
- 60-minute executive workshop and 90-day test plan
If we cannot surface at least three material routing opportunities you did not already know about and agree are actionable, we refund half. In exchange we ask for data access, two stakeholder interviews and permission to publish an anonymized case study.
Standard Audit
$10,000–$15,000
15 business days
- Same deliverable, up to three brands or markets. Priced by category breadth and geography.
Continuous Routing Intelligence
from $36,000 / year
- One brand, category and market
- Quarterly routing refresh
- Monthly change alerts when a cited page changes its destination
- Two executive reviews per year
- Portfolio packages $60k–$90k
Your standard audit fee is credited in full against an annual contract signed within 30 days.
Why we charge for the first look: a free audit tells us nothing about whether you can act on it. The fee is the qualification.
Your audit is delivered privately. We publish benchmarks, never client diagnostics.