IL Makiage is a $500M D2C beauty brand, and they scaled by leaning into a channel most brands overlook: YouTube ads. While many beauty and fashion brands continue to default to Meta alone, or bury video inside Google Performance Max campaigns, IL Makiage did something different. They treated YouTube like a core growth engine. They bet early, built a dedicated strategy around it, and continue to run the exact same winning ads years later the last time we checked.
Why Some Brands Miss the Opportunity
Most brands miss the opportunity because YouTube plays by entirely different rules. It’s not a platform you can simply repurpose short-form content for or fold into your broader Google mix and expect results. In many cases, YouTube ends up embedded inside broader campaigns like Performance Max, which makes it harder to unlock its full potential.
That’s because YouTube behaves differently from Search, Shopping, or Display. It plays by its own rules. Success depends on things like hook timing, sound design, viewer intent, and pacing, not just keywords and bid strategies.
Why YouTube Needs Its Own Strategy
When brands don’t run dedicated YouTube campaigns, they lose visibility. Within Performance Max, you can’t isolate YouTube performance cleanly. You can’t optimise creative based on watch behaviour. And you can’t build a strategy tailored to how people actually consume video. To make YouTube work, it has to be treated as its own channel, with strategy, creative, and measurement designed specifically for the platform.Many brands underestimate what YouTube can actually do. When approached with solid strategic thinking, it can become one of the highest-converting channels in your media mix, not just a brand awareness tool.
IL Makiage understood this early and leaned into the full-funnel potential of the platform, using YouTube to not only acquire new customers, but to educate, build trust, and reinforce their brand positioning all in one go.
A Great Brand Always Comes First
IL Makiage’s ads work because the brand is crystal clear. They’re not trying to be for everyone. They’ve built a sharp, tech-forward, maximalist beauty brand with confidence baked into every touchpoint. From their unapologetic tone of voice to their interactive product quiz, the brand is bold, intentional, and memorable. That kind of clarity converts. Scaling ads without a refined proposition is like running in sand. The best creative and the most clever funnel can’t fix a brand that doesn’t know what it stands for.
A Hero SKU Strategy Is Key
One of the smartest moves IL Makiage made was resisting the urge to scale everything. Instead of running ads for a full product lineup, they zeroed in on a single hero: their best-selling foundation. They built an entire acquisition funnel around it. It starts with an interactive shade-matching quiz; gamified, data-driven, and frictionless. Then comes the hook: try it risk-free. If it’s not a match, you get your money back. Simple, bold, and incredibly effective. This kind of focus allowed them to optimise media spend, refine creative, and build trust with one high-performing offer before expanding out. For brands trying to scale, this is a powerful reminder, don’t spread yourself thin. Start with your strongest SKU, craft a compelling journey around it, and make it near-impossible to say no.
Conclusion
The blueprint is there for brands willing to focus. and it's far more replicable than most think. IL Makiage didn’t win by doing more; they won by doing a few things exceptionally well. YouTube remains one of the most underutilised channels in beauty and fashion, not because it doesn’t work, but because most brands haven’t taken the time to understand how to work it. If you're curious what this could look like for your brand, feel free to reach out. We're happy to exchange thoughts and share what we’ve seen work behind the scenes.
