What is UGC and how to use it in ads

UGC stands for user-generated content, and for a brand it means something very concrete: a video filmed by a real person, with your product in hand, on their phone and in their own home, for you to use in your ads and on your social channels. I've been a UGC creator in Portugal since 2024 and have filmed for more than 75 brands, so this is what those videos have taught me about why UGC works and how to use it in ads without throwing money away.

What UGC actually is

Originally, UGC was whatever customers posted on their own, like a photo of their plate at a restaurant, a review on an online shop or a video of them opening a parcel. Today, when people talk about UGC for brands, they almost always mean the commissioned version: a brand hires a UGC creator, who films from a brief or a script but keeps the made-at-home feel of the videos people were already posting by themselves.

The brand uses the video in its ads and on its channels, within the agreed rights, and it doesn't have to go up on the creator's profile, so their follower count matters little or not at all. With UGC you're buying the video, not the creator's audience, and that's the big difference from working with influencers.

Why UGC videos work in ads

In Nielsen's 2021 Trust in Advertising study, which surveyed more than 40,000 people across five regions of the world, recommendations from people they know were the most trusted channel, at 88%. Anyone watching a UGC video knows it's an ad, but the video takes the shape of a recommendation: a person holding the product and talking about it the way they'd tell a friend, in the kitchen or in the car, with no studio lights.

In a feed, a video like this looks like everything else people are scrolling through, and TikTok itself advises brands to feature people in their ads, whether creators, employees or customers, to capture attention. Because it's filmed on a phone with no film crew, it's easy to have several to test instead of betting everything on one.

What UGC looks like in each niche

The format changes with the product, and here are examples from the niches I've filmed in:

• Beauty: the evening routine in the bathroom mirror, with the cream in hand from the very first second.
• Health: the problem told in the first person, like a bad night's sleep, and what changed once the product became part of the routine.
• Restaurants and food: the first forkful in front of the camera and the unedited reaction.
• Apps and platforms: the phone screen recorded while the creator sorts out something real, like booking an appointment.
• Games and tech: the box opened on the table and the first few minutes of trying it out.
• Home: a room before and after, with the product doing the work halfway through the video.
• Education: someone explaining why they signed up and what they can already do today.

How to use UGC in Meta and TikTok ads

Good videos are half the job, and the other half is how you run them. This is what I tell the brands I work with, and the first three come straight from TikTok's own recommendations:

• Ask for vertical videos, in 9:16, the phone's full-screen format.
• Get the product or the promise into the first three seconds, because that's where people decide whether to keep watching or swipe past.
• Test several openings for the same video. TikTok suggests three to five versions per ad group, and changing just the hook, the opening of the video, already tells you what holds your audience.
• Put the key message on screen, so the video still makes sense when it's watched without sound.

Before filming, check the usage rights, meaning permission to put the video into paid ads and not just on the brand's profile. With the videos I make, three months of paid ad usage is always included, because a video only shows what it's worth once it's been running for a while.

If the creator agrees, the ad can also run under their name, which Meta calls a partnership ad, and according to Meta, adding these ads to regular campaigns delivered on average a 19% lower cost per acquisition and a 13% higher click-through rate. On TikTok the idea is similar and it's called Spark Ads: the brand promotes one of the creator's own posts as an ad, with their permission.

A UGC creator, a campaign or a UGC agency?

If you're looking for a UGC agency, you most likely want someone to handle everything for you: choosing the creators, writing the scripts, following the shoots and delivering finished videos. That's what I do in my UGC campaigns, with a network of more than 100 Portuguese creators I've chosen one by one, who have delivered more than 500 videos between them, and you only step in to approve.

If you'd rather have one face and a direct line, you can also hire me to film it myself, in Portuguese or in English. Either way, videos are usually ready in about five working days, revisions are unlimited within the approved concept, and I reply within 24 hours.