• AI visibility

Guide · AI search

Can AI recommendations lower what a DTC brand pays for each new customer?

Possibly, and the early signs point that way: shoppers sent by AI assistants arrive on product pages ready to buy, and a high share of them are new to the store. But the channel is still small next to paid social and search, and no one has yet published what an AI-sourced customer costs. For a direct-to-consumer brand, AI visibility is best treated as a new acquisition channel to build, not a replacement for the ones that pay the bills.

By Underneath Team Guide Updated

The short version

  1. Paid acquisition keeps getting dearer. Meta reported its average price per ad rose 12% year over year in the second quarter of 2026.
  2. AI referrals bring new customers. Shopify’s president said (opens in a new tab) “new buyer orders are coming in at nearly twice the rate of other channels” from AI, and AI-driven traffic and orders to Shopify stores tripled year over year.
  3. Those shoppers buy more readily. Shopify’s data (opens in a new tab) shows AI-referred visits to product pages convert at nearly 50% higher rates than organic search, with 14% higher order values.
  4. Specialist brands benefit most so far. 75% of AI-attributed purchases on Shopify in the second quarter came from outside its top 100 product categories, as Retail TouchPoints reported (opens in a new tab).
  5. The trust question is decided on review sites. In our study of “Is this brand legit?” answers, 88.0% cited a review or complaint platform, and claims resting only on review platforms were negative 56.5% of the time.

Who buys from a DTC brand, and what does each new customer cost today?

The buyer is a stranger the brand must pay to reach, usually through social ads and creators.

A direct-to-consumer (DTC) brand sells mostly through its own online store. That gives it the margin and the customer data a marketplace seller gives up, but it also means every new customer has to be found and persuaded from scratch. For most DTC brands that work is done by paid social: Meta and TikTok ads, creator partnerships and affiliate links, with Google search catching the people who already know the name.

The price of that work is rising. Meta, the largest seller of social ads, said ad impressions rose 14% and the average price per ad rose 12% year over year in the second quarter of 2026. Social is also becoming a bigger share of how online purchases start. Over the 2025 holidays, Adobe (opens in a new tab) found social media’s share of online retail revenue reached 4.6%, and the affiliates and partners channel, which includes influencers, reached 20.4%.

Profit is hard to come by on those terms. When Warby Parker reported its first full year of net income, $1.6 million on $871.9 million of revenue, Retail Dive (opens in a new tab) noted it joined “a small group of DTC brands that have been able to achieve profitability.” The executive question is whether a new channel can bring in first-time buyers without the ad bill rising with them. Insurtech startups weigh the same trade as funding tightens, favoring a channel built on evidence rather than ad spend, as our guide to insurtech customers and AI explains.

Where do AI assistants fit in how shoppers find DTC brands?

They sit where a shopper describes a problem and asks what to buy, before any ad reaches them.

A social ad interrupts someone who was not shopping. An assistant answers someone who is. That difference shows up in the data. Shopify (opens in a new tab) found that more than half of AI-referred sessions start on a product page, against about 20% for organic search. The shopper has already compared options in the conversation and clicks through to a specific product.

The channel is growing fast from a small base. Shopify says AI-referred orders on its stores grew nearly 13 times year over year in the first quarter of 2026, and AI chatbot referral sessions more than 8 times. Triple Whale (opens in a new tab), an analytics company for ecommerce brands, says AI-attributed orders it sees rose 105.5% between Black Friday and Cyber Monday 2025 and July 2026, with ChatGPT behind roughly three out of four of them.

It is not yet large. Shopify says organic search still refers more sessions to its merchants than all tracked AI platforms combined, and Harley Finkelstein called agentic commerce volume “still small relative to our massive GMV.” Traditional search sessions on Shopify stores are up 1.3 times over two years and hold roughly one-third of all storefront sessions. AI adds to search; it has not replaced it.

Which questions do shoppers ask AI before buying from a DTC brand?

They describe a problem, compare named brands, and ask whether an unfamiliar brand can be trusted.

The prompts below are illustrative, written to show the stages; they are not observed data.

  • Problem first: “What bra won’t irritate my eczema?” or “Best cookware without nonstick coatings.”
  • Brand comparison: “Is [brand] worth it compared with [rival]?” or “Which mattress brands are best for back pain?”
  • Dupe hunting: “Something like [premium brand] hoodies but cheaper.”
  • Trust check: “Is [brand] legit? What do customers say?”
  • Fit and returns: “Does [brand] run small, and what is the return policy?”

The first type is where DTC brands built around a specific need can win. Shopify’s holiday report (opens in a new tab) quotes Cottonique, a hypoallergenic apparel brand, whose co-founder says “Nobody with eczema types ‘hypoallergenic bra.’” Assistants can match the plain-language problem to the product whose page explains it. Cottonique says its AI-referred sales grew 276% year over year, with total sales up 52%; those are the brand’s own figures, not an independent test.

How does an AI recommendation turn into a DTC sale?

The assistant shortlists a product, the shopper lands on its page, checks reviews, and buys.

For a DTC brand the path is short: a question, a product named in the answer, a click to the brand’s own product page (or, where an assistant offers it to the merchant, a checkout inside the assistant), a first order, and then the retention program that makes the customer profitable. The assistant replaces the ad as the first touch, and the brand pays nothing per impression for it.

What the brand still pays for is being the right answer. Three findings matter here:

  • New customers, not just existing ones. Finkelstein said new buyer orders from AI channels arrive at nearly twice the rate of other channels. For a DTC brand that pays most of its marketing budget to find first-time buyers, that is the line that counts.
  • Higher intent. Shopify found AI-referred conversion beat organic search in 23 of 25 merchant categories, by an average of 56% within those categories. Salesforce’s holiday data (opens in a new tab) says shoppers referred by AI search converted nine times more often than those from social media.
  • The maker has a documented edge. OpenAI says (opens in a new tab) that when several merchants sell a product, ChatGPT ranks them on availability, price, quality and whether the seller is “the maker or primary seller of that item.” A DTC brand is the maker, which helps it keep the sale on its own store if price and stock are competitive.

We infer that the economics improve most for brands whose products need explaining. Aviator Nation, which sells tie-dyed hoodies for around $200, told Shopify it has leaned less on paid acquisition and sees ChatGPT as one of several touchpoints that bring shoppers back to the brand.

What makes an assistant suggest one DTC brand over another?

Clear, complete product data and independent evidence of quality; platforms document some inputs, studies observe others.

Documented by the platform. OpenAI says ChatGPT considers structured product data from merchants and third parties, such as price and description, “and other third-party content,” and summarizes reviews from public websites. It says product results are not ads; ads are shown separately, and Triple Whale’s guide already reports early results from 188 shops running ChatGPT ads. Shopify merchants’ data reaches ChatGPT through Shopify Catalog.

Reported by a platform, not independently tested. Finkelstein said AI searches powered by Shopify’s Catalog “converted twice the rate of those using scraped data,” because products show up complete and accurate. Shopify also says 75% of AI-attributed purchases came from outside its top 100 categories, which suggests niche products are getting found.

Observed in our study. When shoppers ask whether a brand is legit, the answer leans on review platforms. In our study of 79 brands, Trustpilot and the BBB accounted for 61.7% of all review-platform citations. Every complete answer called the brand legitimate, but 99.7% raised at least one problem. For a young DTC brand with a thin review history, a handful of complaints on those sites can become the assistant’s summary.

Our inference. Studies covered in how small brands get recommended by AI suggest independent coverage matters more than a brand’s own site. Advertising budgets do not appear to buy recommendations directly, as our piece on whether ad spend helps AI brand recommendations explains.

What does it cost a DTC brand to stay invisible to AI assistants?

It keeps the brand fully dependent on paid channels whose prices are rising.

We cannot put a dollar figure on it; no study has measured lost DTC sales from AI absence. The risk is structural. If a growing share of high-intent, first-time buyers starts with an assistant, and Shopify’s data says those shoppers are over-represented among new buyers, then a brand the assistant does not name must buy those customers back through ads at Meta’s rising prices. Meanwhile, rivals the assistant does name acquire them at no media cost.

There is also a reputation cost. When someone asks whether your brand is legit, the assistant builds an answer anyway, from whatever review and complaint pages it finds. In our study, claims attached only to review platforms were negative 56.5% of the time. A brand that ignores those pages lets them write the first impression.

How does GEO work for a DTC brand?

GEO makes your products easy for assistants to understand, verify and recommend, without promising that they will.

Generative engine optimization (GEO) for a DTC brand covers six areas:

  1. Problem-led product pages. Write each hero product page around the problems it solves and who it is for, in shoppers’ own words, with specs, sizing, materials and care in plain text. AI shoppers land on product pages, so the page is also the first impression.
  2. Complete product data. Keep your catalog and feeds full and current; Shopify’s Catalog figures suggest complete data converts better than scraped pages.
  3. Third-party coverage. Earn reviews from independent publications and creators who explain why the product is different. This is digital PR aimed at the sources assistants cite, not just at reach.
  4. Review platform hygiene. Claim your Trustpilot and BBB profiles, answer complaints, and ask real customers for detailed reviews. Never buy or fake them.
  5. Consistent facts everywhere. Price, return policy, shipping and claims should match across your site, retail partners, Amazon if you sell there, and press coverage. Our guide to AI shopping assistants covers retailer and marketplace listings in more depth.
  6. Measure it as acquisition. Track AI referrals as their own channel, compare their new-customer share and order value with paid social, and check regularly how assistants answer your category and trust questions. Why analytics miss AI visibility explains what referral data cannot see.

What don’t DTC founders know yet about AI-sourced customers?

It does not tell us what an AI-sourced customer costs, or how long they stay.

The strongest numbers here come from platforms with an interest in the channel: Shopify, which sells Agentic Storefronts, and Triple Whale, which sells attribution. Neither has published how its figures are calculated in detail. “New buyer orders at nearly twice the rate” is a quote from an earnings call, not a published metric. Brand results such as Cottonique’s are self-reported.

No one has published the repeat purchase rate or lifetime value of customers who arrived through an assistant, which is what decides whether they are cheaper customers or merely cheaper first orders. Attribution is also weak: a shopper who sees a brand in ChatGPT and later clicks a Meta ad will be credited to Meta. Testing whether GEO work caused a rise is covered in how to prove GEO caused sales.

Where should a DTC brand start?

Start with the questions that should lead to your hero products, and the trust question new buyers ask.

List the five to ten problems your best-selling products solve and write them as a shopper would ask an assistant. Add “Is [brand] legit?” and “[brand] vs [main rival].” Run them in ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, Gemini and Perplexity, several times each, and note whether you appear, how you are described, and which review pages are cited. Then check your AI referral traffic’s share of new customers against paid social.

If you want help turning that into a plan, tell us about your brand and we will show where assistants name you and your rivals today, what they say about your reputation, and which fixes are most likely to bring in first-time buyers without adding to your ad spend. The generative engine optimization service page describes the ongoing work behind such a plan, from problem-led product pages and complete feeds to review-site upkeep and independent coverage.

Frequently asked questions

Does ChatGPT send traffic to DTC brand websites or to Amazon?

Both. OpenAI says ChatGPT ranks merchants partly on whether the seller is the maker or primary seller, so a DTC brand with competitive price and stock can win the click to its own store.

Can AI search replace Meta ads for a DTC brand?

Not today. AI referrals are growing fast but remain small next to paid social and organic search. Treat AI visibility as an added acquisition channel and measure it against paid social.

Do Shopify brands appear in ChatGPT automatically?

OpenAI says Shopify merchants’ product data is integrated through Shopify Catalog with no extra work required. Appearing in the feed is not the same as being recommended; that still depends on the answer.

What do AI assistants say when asked whether a brand is legit?

In our study, every complete answer called the brand legitimate, but almost all raised problems, usually drawn from review and complaint sites such as Trustpilot and the BBB.

Sources

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