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ChatGPT · measured July 2026

The ChatGPT Shelf for Drugstore Color Cosmetics

e.l.f. is in nearly 8 of every 10 answers

78% for e.l.f., 61% for Maybelline, 60% for NYX. This is the most concentrated shelf we measured — 69 brands across 645 questions, against 251 in clay masks. Ulta alone carries half the offers, and not one offer came direct from a brand.

Questions asked
645
Brands seen
69
Offers recorded
3,926
Through a feed
84%

Who ChatGPT names

Share of shelf is the percentage of answers a brand appeared in. It is not a rank of quality or sales — it is how often the model brought the brand up when someone asked about drugstore makeup.

  1. 1 e.l.f. 78%
  2. 2 Maybelline 61%
  3. 3 NYX 60%
  4. 4 Milani 27%
  5. 5 L'Oréal 23%
  6. 6 Revlon 21%
  7. 7 Wet n Wild 19%
  8. 8 ColourPop 15%

Where the offers come from

Every product ChatGPT showed came from somewhere. Brand-direct means the offer pointed at the brand's own store rather than a retailer.

  • Ulta 50% · 1,637 offers
  • Walmart 31% · 1,012 offers
  • Target 11% · 363 offers
  • CVS 8% · 255 offers
  • Brand-direct 0% · 12 offers
  • Sephora 0% · 4 offers

How the shelf gets built

84% of the offers here arrived through a product feed rather than a page crawl, and 12 of them came direct from a brand.

Shelf position Offers Through a feed Brand named
Top of shelf 1,759 84% 84%
Positions 2–3 1,525 84% 83%
Position 4 and below 642 82% 82%

Who writes this shelf

Before ChatGPT names a drugstore makeup brand, it reads. These are the sources it cited most when building this shelf.

See every source that writes the shelf →

How we measured this

  • We asked ChatGPT 645 shopping questions about drugstore makeup in July 2026. The questions never named a brand, so nothing here was prompted into the answer.
  • Questions were repeated. ChatGPT does not answer the same way twice, so a single ask tells you nothing — share of shelf is the pattern across all 645 of them.
  • We recorded every brand mentioned and every product offer shown, 3,926 offers across 69 brands.
  • This is one engine, one country, one point in time. It is a snapshot of a shelf that moves.

Questions about the method, or think a number is wrong? Tell us — we will check it against the raw data and correct the page.

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Other shelves we measured