Our Insights

Ulta’s digital shelf is starting to feel a lot like Amazon’s. Sponsored placements dominate the first page. Media investment is increasing. And in most categories, the same 3 to 4 brands show up again and again.

The Sephora Summer Sale has become one of the key mid-year benchmarks for beauty brands. This year, the event quietly launched on June 26 and ran through July 8, a full 13 days, slightly longer than in past years and timed strategically to wrap around Amazon Prime Day. While the promotion didn’t carry splashy headlines, it drew plenty of shopper engagement and revealed some clear shifts in category momentum and retail channel dynamics.

Sephora’s second quarter of 2025 was not a story of sweeping disruption. It was a quarter marked by steady recalibration. The brands that won did so through a combination of product strength, precise storytelling, and selective use of paid media.

Q2 2025 was marked by continued economic headwinds that led to more cautious consumer behavior. Search volume in the Beauty and Personal Care category declined 16 percent quarter over quarter, and organic visibility fell by 9.9 percent. This suggests a softening in
discovery and engagement across the category. Sponsorship activity remained essentially flat, rising just 0.3 percent. Brands maintained their paid media presence but did so with more control and selectivity. The market rewarded those who prioritized efficiency and performance over sheer scale. Hero SKUs were the main drivers of success. Brands like Nutrafol, EltaMD, and Clean Skin Club leaned into their top products using clear positioning, optimized PDPs, and high social proof. The strongest performers showed alignment between media strategy, pricing, and
conversion-focused content.

Spring 2025 is delivering exactly what shoppers are looking for: skin-forward care, format flexibility, and a renewed focus on finishes that feel expressive without being overdone. We looked at Amazon’s top beauty search terms in April and compared them to platform-wide trend
coverage from Ulta and Sephora to get a clear view of what’s winning right now and where those trends are gaining traction fastest.

In April, we published Spring Haul 2025: Who won the spring sales event. The article was picked up by multiple publications and helped frame one of the
clearest platform shifts we have seen in years. Ulta was winning with full-funnel execution. Sephora was leaning heavily on paid just to stay seen. Brands were navigating diverging traffic curves, and Spring Haul became the first stress test of the year.

This fall, Ulta will open its digital storefront to a wider slate of brands through a new marketplace model—one that sits inside Ulta.com, taps into its loyalty engine, and gives select brands a new path into the
ecosystem. This isn’t a play for scale. It’s a play for depth. And it changes the retail
map.

Brand .coms used to be the endpoint. Paid social built the funnel. Email picked up the stragglers. Everything pointed back to a single, controllable checkout. That logic no longer holds. In 2025, shoppers aren’t converting where you tell them to. They’re converting where the experience is faster, easier, and more rewarding. That’s not your
site. It’s Amazon, Ulta, and Sephora.

Ulta’s shopper knows what they want, and increasingly, it lands between 20 and 40 dollars. Whether it is skincare, makeup, or hair care, the products driving growth in 2025 are not luxury priced or low tier. They are benefit-led, repeatable, and feel worth it.