Ulta Beauty's Ice Spice Fragrance Livestream Had a 178K-View Problem

Ulta Beauty spent four months building toward a single livestream.

In March, CEO Kecia Steelman told investors the retailer would launch a curated assortment on TikTok Shop to reach younger, digitally native shoppers.

On July 22, the plan produced its first real test.

It was a TikTok Shop livestream with rapper Ice Spice, launching her debut fragrance, In Ha Mood.

The scent went on sale during the stream, exclusive to Ulta's TikTok Shop while supplies lasted.

Ice Spice was the first celebrity to co-host a TikTok Shop Live on Ulta's channel, part of its Grand Opening Campaign.

The rapper is one of the most recognizable young artists in music right now, with hits including "Boy's a liar" and "Barbie World" behind her.

Her fanbase is concentrated on TikTok and Instagram, where Ulta and fragrance partner Revlon spent over a year developing the scent with her.

The livestream was framed as a celebrity fragrance drop.

But it reads more as Ulta's opening move into owning a media channel of its own, with the fragrance as the test case for a much bigger goal.

Ulta Beauty Counts Impressions Over Viewers

Ice Spice and Ulta Beauty have a combined 15.9 million TikTok followers between them, and a combined 19 million on Instagram.

The livestream was hosted by Ice Spice alongside creators Michelle York and Kelsey Martinez.

York and Martinez bring 295,000 and 446,000 followers, respectively, adding two more accounts to the push.

The fragrance was made available exclusively through Ulta's TikTok Shop for the duration of the stream, in three different sizes priced at $28, $58, and $79.

According to figures Ulta's fragrance partner Revlon shared with Glossy, the stream generated 178,000 total views and 5.95 million impressions.

These numbers deserve more scrutiny than a celebrity fragrance headline usually gets.

178,000 views against a combined audience approaching 16 million on TikTok alone is a low conversion rate.

Just over 1.1% of the two accounts' combined TikTok following watched a stream that both accounts spent days teasing in advance.

Impressions count every time the stream appears in a feed, including scrolls, autoplays, and repeat views from the same accounts.

Views also count the people who stopped watching.

Revlon and Ulta have not disclosed a sales figure tied to the stream.

The product remains listed on Ulta's TikTok Shop, and the wider retail rollout hits UltaBeauty.com on August 19.

TikTok Shop Nears 20% of U.S. Social Commerce

Ulta's own language points to what's actually being built at scale here.

Steelman described the March announcement as a way to bring "our undeniably Ulta Beauty experience and assortment to life" across social and AI-enhanced commerce platforms.

This is the language of a retailer building a distribution channel, which it intends to program on an ongoing basis.

A celebrity-led event like this is also a fast way to put a new channel in front of a large audience and give it an early boost.

MAC Cosmetics and QVC have both used TikTok Shop livestreams to drive real sales this year.

However, neither has paired the format with a celebrity fragrance launch at Ulta's scale.

This alone makes the Ice Spice livestream one of the biggest live tests of this format that fragrance has seen so far.

With all that aside, TikTok Shop's numbers give some sense of why Ulta is willing to experiment here.

eMarketer reported that TikTok Shop made up nearly 20% of US social commerce in 2025, with sales forecast to exceed $20 billion in 2026.

Ulta is likely moving early on a channel this size, before every other beauty retailer figures out the same thing.

And while the Ice Spice livestream might not have paid off on its own, that doesn't mean Ulta is wrong to be building this channel.

Agencies Should Price the Full Stream Cost

Agencies weighing whether a TikTok Shop livestream is worth the investment need a clearer cost structure than most retailers are currently disclosing.

A single livestream production, combined with a multi-day teaser campaign across two accounts on both TikTok and Instagram, adds up fast.

Real production spend, talent fees, and paid amplification are all needed to hit the impression numbers Ulta reported.

Revlon's own comeback strategy under CEO Michelle Peluso, which includes its partnership with Ice Spice, has also leaned heavily on fragrance licensing.

Upcoming launches tied to Champion, Palm Angels, and Salt Life are all following the same model.

But fragrance also carries a discovery disadvantage that separates it from other product categories.

A color cosmetic or a skincare texture proves itself on camera in seconds.

Fragrance sells on description, so the celebrity's presence does the entire job.

Ice Spice's fit with Ulta's audience is a matter of overlap.

Her music audience and Ulta's fragrance shopper are two different customer bases, and the low conversion from following to viewing suggests this overlap was thin.

Revlon president of fragrance Amber Garrison told Glossy the brand hired three perfumers at Givaudan to develop the scent alongside Ice Spice over more than a year.

Most retailers testing livestream commerce are not replicating this kind of production timeline for a single event.

A brand attempting the same thing with a rushed or licensed product is testing a whole different variable.

Three things brands and agencies should take from Ulta's first TikTok Shop test:

• Request view-to-follower ratios before signing off: Impressions and follower counts hide how many people actually watched.
• Treat fragrance as a higher-risk livestream bet: Products that can't be shown visually depend on the talent's pull to carry the sale.
• Ask what comes after the first event: A retailer opening a new channel needs a programming calendar, so partners should see the second and third campaigns before funding the first.

Ulta ran a test, and a test earns its keep by producing numbers a brand can act on next time.

Our Take: Does Fragrance Belong on Livestream at All?

A livestream sells fragrance on the celebrity's word alone.

We'd argue that it still belongs there, as long as the brand treats the stream as a way to buy an audience it can retarget later. 

Ulta and Revlon spent over a year on In Ha Mood and hired three perfumers at Givaudan, then launched it in a format that sells on description.

QVC has sold fragrance on live television for decades, and viewers buy on the host's description every time.

Ice Spice can do the same job for Ulta, but she needs more than one stream for her audience to learn that the channel exists.

August 19 puts In Ha Mood in front of Ulta's regular shoppers, and the numbers here will tell Ulta more than 178,000 views did.

Influencer partnerships are already changing the brief that brands hand to their agencies, and Ulta's owned media push belongs to the same story.

Brands evaluating livestream commerce and celebrity partnerships need agencies that can separate impression counts from real conversions before recommending the spend.

Explore the top social media marketing agencies in our directory.