ON BRANDBeauty feels like a lot right now. New brand every week, new hero product every scroll. So we did the reading for you: 10,000 videos, 3.1 billion views, three months of Gen Z filming their routines. Here are the five names they cannot stop putting on camera, and what they actually say once it is rolling.
Powered by Oriane.xyz video intelligenceHere is the thing about Gen Z. They do not buy brands. They buy products with a personality. Across three months of teen beauty content the same five names keep coming back: a founder led glow machine, two celebrity houses, a legacy inclusivity icon, and a scrappy clean beauty upstart out engaging all of them. None of it is winning on ad spend. It is winning because a teenager in her bathroom light decided the product was worth filming, and her comment section showed up like a fan club.
Beauty brands used to compete on what the product does. Now they compete on whether Gen Z wants to be seen using it.
Ranked by how much of the Gen Z beauty feed each brand owns. Tap any frame to watch the top clip, tap any logo to meet the brand. Reach is total views. Engagement is Oriane's median rate per view. And under every score, the two things worth reading: what the creator says out loud, and what the comments say back.
Watch · 8.5M views@nataliestrobll · Instagram
Almost half of Rhode videos are about looking dewy and glazed. Nobody reads an ingredient list out loud. They just film the glow, and the comments hand it right back.
“If you are not taking care of yourself, you are not going to feel confident.”
Watch · 5.8M views@doriasglam · TikTok
Selena never runs an ad. She just exists, and teens rebuild her routine step by step. Before the audience says anything else, they say the shades are pretty.
“Today we are doing my updated everyday makeup routine.”
“the colours are so prettyyy” @tweediafleur
Watch · 3.6M views@glambby_ · TikTok
e.l.f. is the only brand where creators say the price out loud. Worth it. Drugstore. Same as the expensive one. Value is the whole personality, and it sticks.
“Full glam base, and it did not cost me a thing.”
“need to try that” @carinagd
Watch · 13.8M views@meva_rakoto · TikTok
One summer look pulled 13.8 million views, the biggest single clip in the study. Creators talk technique, the Matchstick, the glide. The comments keep it simple.
“I love this product because it glides right onto the skin.”
“So glowy” @naomimiz
Watch · 3.8M views@lifeofshauni · TikTok
Best engagement rate in the whole study, on a fraction of the reach. Tiny brand, fan-club energy. The creator sets it up, the comments finish the sentence.
“We all have been waiting for this.”
“u look gorgeous” @safaculer
Sentiment read from spoken word transcripts and comments. Anything critical (overhyped, broke out, pilling, overpriced) never cleared 5% for any brand in the top five.
"Ur so glowy" is the entire
marketing strategy.
Every beauty video is really two conversations. There is what the creator says while the camera rolls, the transcript, which is the pitch. And there is what the comment section says back, which is the verdict. We read both. They do not say the same thing, and the gap is the whole game.
Out loud, creators sell the ritual and the feeling. They narrate the routine step by step, they name the glow, and roughly one in four talks like a superfan. This is where the vocabulary gets set.
Underneath, the audience answers in two words at a time. Less about ingredients, more about desire. They react to the look, and they tell you they want it. This is where watching turns into wanting.
Put the two side by side and the pattern is loud. Creators over index on ritual and obsession. The crowd over indexes on how it looks and whether they can have it. Both barely say anything negative.
Share of videos where each theme shows up, averaged across the top five brands, split by source. Read it as emphasis, not a survey.
The widest reach in the window did not come from a single ad. It came from routines, tutorials and get ready with me clips. Real girls, real bathrooms, real drafts. Tap to watch.
Almost half of Rhode and Rare Beauty content is about looking dewy and glazed, never about an ingredient deck. The hero benefit is a skin finish Gen Z can film in her own bathroom light. Give them the glow, they do the rest.
Rhode has Hailey. Rare Beauty has Selena. The founder is not fronting a campaign, she is just living, and teens copy the routine of someone they already follow. That is distribution money cannot buy.
e.l.f. is the only top five brand where creators say the price out loud. Worth it. Drugstore. Same as the expensive one. When value is your whole personality, the comment section does the selling for free.
These comment sections read like stan culture. Obsessed. I need this. Creators hyping other creators. Negativity stayed under 5% everywhere, which means the real risk was never backlash. It was being ignored.
Reach does not care how many followers you have. The single most watched clip in this entire study came from an account with 53,000 followers. The algorithm rewards the video, not the résumé. Tap a face to meet them.
@glownastzy31.6M peak views
54K followers · TikTok
@mariamanugomez26.7M peak views
1.4M followers · TikTok
@kyliejenner25.3M peak views
59.7M followers · TikTok
@janellezharmenova22.0M peak views
783K followers · Instagram
@crescentiads17.7M peak views
249K followers · TikTok
@ellemoonz17.0M peak views
585K followers · TikTok
Reach is not the only scoreboard. Three smaller brands out engage the giants, which is the earliest sign that a fan club is forming before the mass market has caught on.
The clean beauty darling. Nearly a third of its videos are pure aesthetic and obsession, the highest devotion rate in the study, on a fraction of the reach.
Scent as a personality. Bum Bum Cream and Cheirosa mist ride the smell good routine straight into engagement most big brands would envy.
Fruit forward, glow native, endlessly filmable packaging. Exactly the dewy skin promise Gen Z rewards, punching well above its view count.
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“Ur so glowy” @mariesjunkjournal