UGC or influencers: which should you choose?

The two often get lumped together, and it's easy to see why, since both involve a person talking about your product to camera. The difference lies in what you're buying, and that decides where the video appears, who sees it and how you measure the result. I run UGC campaigns and influencer campaigns too, so I've no reason to steer you either way, and what follows is how I decide myself with each brand.

What's the difference between UGC and influencers

With a UGC video, the creator films for your brand and hands you the file. From then on you use the video in your ads and on your brand's channels, within the rights you agreed, whenever and as often as you like, and the creator's followers matter little, because it's your ads that take the video to people.

With an influencer, it works the other way round. You pay them to post on their own profile, to people who already follow them and trust their taste, and what you're buying is that audience and that trust. The content lives on their profile, reaches as far as that profile reaches, and is out of your hands once it's live.

When to choose UGC

UGC makes most sense when you sell online and run ads, or are about to start, because what you need at that stage is lots of different videos to test and the freedom to swap out what isn't working without depending on anyone's schedule. It's usually the right choice when:

• You need several openings for the same product, to find out which one holds your audience.
• The product needs to be seen working, like an app, a gadget or a cream with a texture you can see.
• You want to measure results by what you sell and what each customer costs you.
• You want to decide when the video appears, to whom and for how long.

When to choose influencers

Influencers win when the goal is to reach a group of people who already follow someone and trust them. A launch where you need the brand talked about for a week, a new restaurant that wants to fill its tables with people from the neighbourhood, or an event that needs an audience are all cases where the word of a familiar face carries more weight than a polished ad.

In those cases I find the right influencers for your brand, talk to them, negotiate the terms and run the campaign through to the final report, with the numbers on what it generated.

What Portuguese law requires

If you're running a campaign in Portugal, there's a part worth knowing before you sign with anyone. Article 8 of the Portuguese Advertising Code says advertising must be unequivocally identified as such, whatever the medium used, and that includes an Instagram post or a TikTok video. When an influencer talks about your brand because you paid them, or because you gave them the product in exchange for the post, they have to make it clear that it's advertising.

Responsibility doesn't sit only with whoever posts, because Article 36 of the same code says the advertiser, meaning you, and anyone else involved in the message can be held liable. Fines for advertising that isn't identified as such range from €1,750 to €3,750 for an individual and from €3,500 to €45,000 for a company.

Regulators are paying attention. In an investigation published by the European Commission in February 2024, which Portugal took part in, 576 influencers were screened, and 97% posted commercial content but only 20% systematically disclosed it as advertising. That same month, Portugal's consumer authority, the Direção-Geral do Consumidor, reported that it had reviewed 366 posts from 20 influencers on Instagram, found irregularities in 102 and opened administrative offence proceedings.

With a UGC video used in ads, the issue almost takes care of itself, because the ad runs from the brand's account and the platform labels it as sponsored. What's left is the usual care: whatever the creator says about the product has to be true and provable, and if the video also goes up on their own profile, it has to be marked as advertising like any other paid post.

And if you combine the two

Often the answer is to use both, each in its own role. Influencers introduce the brand to people who don't know it yet, and UGC videos keep working in your ads, showing up again for those same people until they buy. There's also a middle ground: with the creator's permission, a video can run as an ad with their name next to the brand's, which Meta calls a partnership ad and TikTok calls Spark Ads.

If you still aren't sure which one fits your goal, talk to me and tell me what you want to happen over the next three months. If the answer is selling through ads, the way to go is a UGC campaign, and if it's getting the brand known among people who already follow someone, I'll put together an influencer campaign with you.