AI-to-retail routing intelligence · for prestige beauty brands with DTC + retail
When AI recommends prestige beauty, who gets the cart?
AI engines cite Allure when shoppers ask what prestige beauty to buy. We resolved every outbound link on that inventory — 1,159,435 of them — through its affiliate wrappers to the merchant that actually took the order. Almost none of it comes back to the brand.
No visibility subscription required — and it plugs into sources like Profound, Semrush, Similarweb or Ahrefs. No tags. No pixels. No platform replacement. Commerce Graph Method v1.4.
01 · The proof in beauty
Three numbers from this category's benchmark.
78%
of AI-cited clicks land on Amazon, Sephora, Ulta or Nordstrom
In the resolved sample, four destinations absorb the demand. The brand is not one of them.
2.7%
of resolved links reached any prestige brand's own site
Out of 211,898 affiliate-wrapped links, brand-owned checkout is a rounding error.
73% vs 20%
MAC vs NARS direct capture
Two brands on the same pages, three and a half times apart. The difference is placement format, not spend.
Observed: link paths, affiliate wrappers, merchant destinations. Modeled: opportunity cost and share of clicks. We label which is which.
Read the full Allure teardown: MAC vs NARS02 · What we analysed
Named brands, named publishers, resolved destinations.
Brands analysed
- MAC
- NARS
- Estée Lauder
- Charlotte Tilbury
- Clinique
- Fenty Beauty
- Dior Beauty
- Lancôme
Publishers analysed
- Allure
- Byrdie
- Cosmopolitan
- Harper's Bazaar
- Refinery29
Destinations that captured the demand
- Amazon
- Sephora
- Ulta
- Nordstrom
- Macy's
What we look at first for you
- 01
Which Allure and Byrdie placements route to Amazon rather than to your own PDP, ranked by citation weight
- 02
Where a reseller or a marketplace 3P listing is capturing demand your retail partners are funding
- 03
The placement formats MAC wins on that NARS loses, mapped to the pages you can actually influence
Who this is for
Built for Complexity.
Aqxle is built for consumer brands with meaningful online demand, competitive category pressure, and complex discovery pathways across AI platforms, publishers, affiliates, retailers, and marketplaces.
- You manage complex omnichannel availability (DTC, Amazon, Walmart, Target).
- You are paying for AI visibility and digital shelf tools, but can't connect top-of-funnel marketing lift to actual retail checkout.
- You suspect AI engines are routing your buyers to competitors or third-party sellers, but have no visibility into the pathways.
How it works
From prompt to the retail shelf — and where the revenue is lost.
Most tools stop at "were we mentioned." Aqxle keeps going — through the citation, through the commerce route, all the way to the shelf the buyer actually lands on, and puts a dollar figure on every hop that leaks.
- Prompt100%
- AI visibility62%
Not visible in the answer · −38%
- Citation source46%
Cited, but no commerce route · −16%
- Commerce route37%
Wrong merchant / broken link · −9%
- DTC cart12%
Lands on your own cart
- Amazon 3P hijacker15%
Third-party seller wins the buy box
- Walmart out-of-stock10%
Unbuyable listing or broken link
Captured on your shelf
12%
Leaked at retail
42%
Largest single leak
Off-shelf · no listing met · 15%
No tags, no pixels, no rip-and-replace. Aqxle runs on its own data and plugs into sources like Profound, Stackline, SEMrush, Similarweb or Ahrefs.
The offer
Start free. Pay when you want us to go deeper.
The free audit proves the leakage is real on your brand. The paid tiers go wider and faster across your citation sources and retail shelves, and are the only ones that connect to your first-party data.
PROVE IT'S HAPPENING
Free Revenue Opportunity Audit
$0
24 hours
Proof before you pay. We trace one specific AI-to-retail path in your category and deliver one hard leakage number to prove the blind spot exists.
- 1 brand, 1 category
- 1 traced AI-to-retail path
- One leakage or capture number
- Delivered straight to your inbox
Pinpoint the bottleneck
Rapid Diagnostic Scan
$2,500
48 hours
A surgical, automated scan of your most critical AI-to-retail bottleneck.
- 1 brand + 2 competitors
- Scan of 1 priority citation source
- Digital shelf readiness check
- 1-page diagnostic & 15-minute walkthrough
100% credited toward the Omnichannel Leakage Map.
Request my free auditThe category diagnostic
Omnichannel Leakage Map
$10,000
Delivered in under 3 weeks
The definitive map of your AI-driven revenue leakage across your top AI-cited domains and major retail shelves.
- 1 brand + 4 competitors
- Top 50 AI-cited domains scanned
- Multi-retailer shelf readiness map
- Modeled revenue leakage calculation
- Executive action plan & 60-minute workshop
100% credited toward Continuous Leakage Monitoring.
Request my free auditContinuous protection
Continuous Leakage Monitoring
from $36,000/year
Billed annually
Real-time routing intelligence and alerts when an AI pathway breaks or sends traffic to an out-of-stock retail SKU.
- Everything in the Leakage Map, continuously updated
- First-party data integration
- Real-time route change alerts
- Out-of-stock and broken-link SKU alerts
- Verified recovery reporting
Your audit is delivered privately. We publish benchmarks, never client diagnostics.
Want this for your brand?