Last July, the period care brand Viv saw its monthly traffic spike by 400%, which “came out of nowhere,” according to Viv’s marketing and design director Kelly Donohue.
After some digging, Donohue discovered that the jump in traffic was driven primarily by Google Gemini and OpenAI’s ChatGPT search recommendations for non-toxic period care. At the time, a study by the scientific journal Environment International came out that found that many popular tampon brands contain heavy metals like lead and arsenic. Many people were asking the AI assistants about toxins in tampons and searching for sustainable period products, which led them to Viv’s blog.
What’s more, many of the people who were directed to Viv’s blog by ChatGPT ended up buying products. Sales converted from these recommendations jumped 436%. Viv is now part of a growing number of digitally-native brands popping up in AI-based search results.
Data and intelligence provider Spins has been tracking how AI tools are already changing the way people search for solutions and products. This month, Spins released its 2025 Industry Trends and Predictions Report, which highlights a shift toward people searching for products through TikTok and AI assistants like ChatGPT. While advertising tools are still being developed for these engines, brands that have built out a deep database of content appear set up to benefit from the rise of generative AI search.
Donohue said that including information about the brand in as many places as possible seemed to help Viv breakthrough on ChatGPT and other AI-powered search platforms. This helped train these AI search engines with thorough context, transparency and education.
Last July, the brand pivoted to centering Viv products’ safety standards in its marketing language, including email, SMS and social media. For instance, some of the blog articles she believes helped catch customers’ eyes last summer were posts like “Lead & Arsenic in Tampons?! Here’s Why Viv is Your Safest Tampon Choice,” published immediately after the tampon study became public. “This also was the top converting post of 2024,” Donohue said.
Detailed and data-driven content seems to be important for getting picked up by these AI tools, she said. Donohue pointed to Viv’s social media and website content, which goes into granular details about period products’ manufacturing processes, ingredient safety and product testing. “These AI tools are specifically scraping through content, but looking for more than just keywords,” she said. “They’re looking for a cohesive response that they can give to people that includes context, sources and background.”
That effort ended up driving further traffic in the months since. “We ended up selling out of about six months of tampon inventory in three weeks, driven by Google’s AI-powered recommendations,” Donohue said.
Spins chief product officer Dan Buckstaff told Modern Retail that the rise of ChatGPT and other AI agents as product discovery tools is forcing brands to think about how to cater to these changes in search behavior.
“Similar to 15 years ago when we were questioning how SEO worked, we’re left with questioning how brands can benefit from AI environments,” Buckstaff said. “Especially in the present state, when three different AI solutions can have three different answers to a posed question.”
This is posing both a challenge and an opportunity for consumer brands, but starting with solid content is the first step. “From the messaging about your product on its packaging to what’s shared on social media or via an influencer, robust messaging in the right places can ensure a product shines in all discovery formats,” he said.
Similarly, the adaptive apparel brand Joe & Bella has seen an influx of new customers coming to its website from ChatGPT in recent months. The brand sells apparel that makes dressing easier for older adults and people living with physical ailments like Parkinson’s. During this past holiday season, a number of those ChatGPT-derived visitors made purchases on Joe & Bella’s website.
“I don’t really know how or what they would have typed or asked ChatGPT to have found us over the holidays,” said Joe & Bella’s co-founder and CEO, Jimmy Zollo. Zollo theorized that SEO keywords the brand continuously invests in, and the brand’s blog are the likely culprits. The brand’s search ads often include keywords like “adaptive clothing,” for example.
This year, Joe & Bella will continue to invest in more content focused on its products’ technology and related SEO keywords that can be picked up by AI chatbots. “It was pretty cool and unexpected, but we need to better understand how to optimize for these searches going forward.”
It’s a question that will be on the minds of many brand executives for months to come. More shoppers, especially Gen Z consumers, are turning to places other than Google to search for products — and the trend shows no sign of slowing down. Now, brand executives are trying to figure out how they can harness this traffic — and drive more of it — on an ongoing basis.
“These searches are top of mind for us now, and the way we’re writing our blogs and the content on our website can play a huge part in people finding us through AI tools,” Viv’s Donohue said.