Brand Discovery Index — July 2026

• 630 names tracked monthly: 539 consumer brands, 49 public figures (creators, athletes, executives), and 42 digital & AI platforms
• 8 years of monthly history, refreshed within 24 hours of each monthly cycle
• International editions: 361 brands across 6 European markets (Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Poland, Portugal; since 2017) and 183 brands in China (since 2018)
• Bespoke coverage: custom name universes and markets built on request

How to Read This — Spotlight

What the index measures: how broadly a brand is being discovered. A breakout means attention arriving from many distinct sources at once, not just a bigger crowd from one.

The Lifecycle chip marks where the brand sits in its overall attention arc:

Lifecycle is the slower, structural read: it's set from each brand's year-over-year attention trend and its level versus its own all-time peak, and only changes once a new stage holds for two straight months, so it won't flip on a single noisy month. The two also read different axes: Lifecycle reflects a brand's overall attention footprint (its size), while Composite Z reflects its breadth (how many distinct sources), which is why the two can disagree.

Where attention is broadening

New breakouts this month (first flag of this cycle): Daihatsu, Tissot, Billie Eilish, Doritos. The rest are carryover flags, still elevated from earlier months.

Composite Z is each brand's attention-breadth momentum versus its own history: how much more, or less, broadly it's being discovered this month. Bar length scales with the magnitude (green rising, red fading).

Brands whose attention is broadening fastest this month, each measured against its own history. A strong monthly signal can sit alongside a decay lifecycle: recent momentum versus long-run level, a step-change in how widely the name is being discovered — in either direction.

Where attention is narrowing

Lowest composite-Z brands, the fade side of the index. Bar length scales with the magnitude of the decline.

Top 5 Brands by Category

The five strongest breadth-momentum names in each sector. Trend (Z) is the same Composite Z as the tables above, ranked within sector; Attention Δ is the month's change in the brand's overall attention level: momentum in breadth versus momentum in size, and the two can disagree.

Brands That Move Together

Some names' attention moves in lockstep: they tend to move in the same month, though which one leads is for your own testing. These are the strongest attention co-movement pairs over five-plus years of shared monthly history where at least one side appears on this sheet. Direct flow shows how much attention actually travels directly between the two names in the last three months. A dash means no meaningful direct flow; the co-movement then reflects a shared audience rather than a direct link. This month shows which side of each pair is broadening right now.

Unexpected Connections

These names move together and have no business doing so. Every row clears three tests: their attention shocks track each other across five-plus years of shared monthly history, no attention travels directly between the two names, and they sit in different categories with no shared sector, corporate parent, or ownership group. What is left is co-movement with nothing visible to explain it — the same audience arriving at two unrelated names in the same month, before anything ties them together in public.

Holds up is the honesty check, and it is why this table is short. We remove each pair's two most influential months — the two contributing most to the co-movement — and recompute it from scratch. A pair carried by one or two coincidences collapses here and is cut; the pairs shown keep most of their co-movement even without their two best months. Pairs involving a public figure are excluded entirely, because a person and a company can be connected in ways this test cannot see.

Coverage: 630 names (539 consumer brands, 49 public figures, 42 digital & AI platforms), monthly, with roughly 8 years of history. Separate European and China editions available. Composite Z is each name's discovery-breadth momentum, standardized against its own history (with an attention-focus filter). Underlying data and methodology are proprietary to AssetFlow.ai LLC. This report is an independent publication of AssetFlow.ai LLC; its consumer-brand signal is benchmarked against publicly released results of Piper Sandler’s Taking Stock With Teens® survey. AssetFlow.ai LLC is not affiliated with, sponsored by, endorsed by, or licensed by Piper Sandler & Co. or any of its affiliates; references to the survey are solely for benchmarking and identification purposes. Not investment advice.