I Tested 1,000+ UGC Ads, Here's What Scales In 2026

In this video, I'm going to show you the biggest mistake I see brands making with UGC right now. I'm going to show you real examples of what's actually working. I'm going to break down how UGC

working. I'm going to break down how UGC is going to fit into your funnel, and I'm going to tell you all the lessons I learned after being in the trenches and building a UGC department from complete

scratch internally at our agency. For

context, we make thousands of ads every single month for direct-to-consumer brands doing seven, eight, and nine figures. About a year ago, we started

figures. About a year ago, we started mass producing statics, and then right before Q4, we added a VSL or video ads department with in-house editors. And

about 3 months ago, we decided it was time to build a full UGC department.

Because honestly, we saw it working in a lot of ad accounts, and we know that [music] consumer behavior has changed in the post-TikTok shop era. So, the way we do things in the agency [music] is whenever we launch something new, my

business partner and I don't just hire out for it.

[music] First, we have to get our hands dirty.

So, we wrote the scripts, we sourced the creators, we reviewed every single cut, [music] and we figured out what actually works and what is just a waste of time and money. And then now, we've built

and money. And then now, we've built SOPs [music] and staffed for it. So, for

the last 90 days, I've done all of this fully in the trenches making [music] this whole UGC thing work. So, the goal of this video is to share the honest lessons that I learned through [music] the process of doing it all myself.

Let's get into it. So, the first thing you need to understand is why most UGC ads flop and how to fix it. By far, the most important or the most common thing

that I see with people saying UGC doesn't work is that they're the ones with the skill issue. They're providing

bad briefs and bad direction. You have

to remember, your creators are not creative strategists. They're just

creative strategists. They're just people with an iPhone making videos for you. So, the way [music] to fix this is

you. So, the way [music] to fix this is proper brief structure, which is what we're going to go over today. The second

is lack of messaging or lack of understanding messaging, and that just comes from understanding awareness stages and messaging as a whole, which we're also going to go over today. And

then finally, just lack of consistent volume. So, these are essentially the

volume. So, these are essentially the three keys to understanding UGC or making your UGC be successful. Proper

brief structure, understanding awareness stages, and proper messaging, and then volume. Before we get into the strategy,

volume. Before we get into the strategy, I do want to take a look at some good pieces of top-of-funnel UGC. We're going

to show one that has essentially a problem-aware hook or a problem-aware, you know, level of awareness for the consumer. And then we're going to look

consumer. And then we're going to look at a founder story piece of UGC content, and then we're going to go into yapper ads. So, we can see that this ad starts

ads. So, we can see that this ad starts essentially the hook, the first 3 seconds, is very native-looking. There's

actually no words being said. Um it's

one of those transformation-style um videos, and it's very, very focused on the problem and calling out the persona. And you can tell, if you sent

persona. And you can tell, if you sent your package to just some random creator, they're not going to be able to do something like this.

[music] [singing] So, this is a longer hook, but essentially what you see is it's calling out the persona immediately, women in their 30s and 40s. They're having these

weird side effects, and then if you watch the video as it goes on, it just says it's very important that you know this is just premenopause or perimenopause or whatever. And then the

edit shows her looking great and then talking head. So, this is something that

talking head. So, this is something that I wanted to highlight. This is an ad from Primal Queen who does like nine figures a year. Very simple,

native-looking format. And the note that I want you to make from this is this creator had no idea how to make a video like this. This is a very good brief.

like this. This is a very good brief.

It's properly executed because A, they probably had very good brief structure and communication, and B, a good creative strategist made this video.

They understand levels of awareness. The

next one we're going to look at is a founder ad, specifically a founder story in a podcast format. And I'm going to just let this ad play for probably 30 seconds because on this channel, you

know, founder-led content is the best content. I bought a plastic barrel for

content. I bought a plastic barrel for 1,200 bucks cuz I didn't have enough money to buy a $5,000 Chinese bathtub for cold plunging.

So, I bought the barrel, and I was like, "Let me see if this is the placebo effect. Let me see if this is real." And

effect. Let me see if this is real." And

I cold plunged every single day, ice bath every single day for 30 days straight. I actually did a challenge on

straight. I actually did a challenge on TikTok of cold plunging every day for 30 days. And it was like the wintertime

days. And it was like the wintertime So, this is people who are already probably aware of cold plunging, right?

So, it's product aware, but they're not necessarily maybe aware of his brand yet. in Atlanta. It was brutal, but I

yet. in Atlanta. It was brutal, but I liked how like mentally challenging it was. I liked chasing that like dopamine

was. I liked chasing that like dopamine hit and just doing challenging tough things. And I was trying to get off

things. And I was trying to get off Adderall, and I didn't think about Adderall at all. After 30 days, I was like, "Wow, like I don't need my Adderall. [music] This is actually

Adderall. [music] This is actually helping me substitute taking that prescription." That's crazy. Such a good

prescription." That's crazy. Such a good example of a top-of-funnel ad, right?

He's not going super deep, just getting people who are aware of taking ice baths and seeding in some of the benefits that it made for him, while also positioning himself as obviously the founder. This

is a founder-led ad ran through his personal Instagram. Okay, so next we're

personal Instagram. Okay, so next we're going to be looking at a yapper ad. And

if you're on direct-to-consumer Twitter at all, you know that everybody is talking about these ads. And from my experience, like I said, we've been running this for 3 months now.

It never works when the first brief that you make for a brand, you tell the creators to do yapper ads. This is

reserved specifically for top creators or good creators that you have either recruited that you know are already good at this type of content, or for creators that have already made a lot of winning ads for you. This typically comes by

brief three or four for us. So, just

keep that in mind when you're watching this video.

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from. The minimalist collection has the gorgeous She just keeps on yap like it's you know, the marketing purist in me looks at these videos and I'm like, "What what am I supposed to do?" But sometimes

it just works like that. If you can find a good creator or if you have a top creator um making your ads right now, send them this video or send them videos like it and just be like, "Yap." So, those are typically the

"Yap." So, those are typically the routes that we take with top-of-funnel UGC content. The other one, we won't go

UGC content. The other one, we won't go too deep into this, but it's any social proof or testimonial, people talking about the result that they got for your product or how well your product works.

The next one, this could be a very short video. Again, this is more

video. Again, this is more middle-bottom-of-funnel, but any objections that you have in your funnel could be price, it could be size, it could be, you know, how much of an ingredient you have, whatever. Your

testimonials, your five-star reviews, your before-and-afters, whatever. Then,

this is something that I do not see a lot of people talking about, but multi-use assets. So, for us, like I

multi-use assets. So, for us, like I said, we've been doing this for a while now. We essentially we start people with

now. We essentially we start people with more problem or product-aware videos.

That's the first couple of briefs that we do when we're trying to weed out if we have a good creator or not, and then we're also making some for the founder if the founder is okay being in content.

Then, we work them down to these videos, yapper ads, social proof testimonials, and then we really put them towards multi-use assets. And what does this

multi-use assets. And what does this mean? This means trial reels or stuff

mean? This means trial reels or stuff for your website, stuff for your listicles, advertorials, stuff for your emails, stuff for Google ads, whatever.

Really, once you find a good creator, you can make a lot of uses out of them.

You can give them a lot of things to do, and that's something that we've seen tremendous success with. Because the

average creator doesn't really make that many good videos. It's like I talked about, you know, the way that we run things, the cream rises to the top very, very fast. So, we're seeing that once we

very fast. So, we're seeing that once we do find a good creator, really, really locking in with them and making all different types of formats, but typically we're starting people at

either problem awareness stage or product awareness stage and following more of an OG VSL type of um script. And then as the creator gets

um script. And then as the creator gets better, we move down this list. Okay, so

before we get into the strategy, this part is very important for you to understand. We're building on the back

understand. We're building on the back of what Hudson already did with Comfort and what Pacter did with Hoss. We're

using their exact methodology, and we're using the internal tool that they built, Tribe. The key thing that you need to

Tribe. The key thing that you need to understand is we're not paying influencers flat fees per video, and we're not even actually billing our clients per video on our end either.

Everything is performance-focused, and everything is done with the desired outcome or the end goal in mind of volume. There are two things that we get

volume. There are two things that we get from running things this way. Number one

is in the ad account, we see a race to the bottom for the lowest cost per acquisition possible. And number two is

acquisition possible. And number two is by doing things this way on a performance basis, we allow the cream to rise to the top. The playing field gets leveled very quickly because the

creators are given the same assets, the same briefs, and the same attention in the start. This reveals the top creators

the start. This reveals the top creators or the creators who actually try hard, the creators who get results very, very quickly, and then that allows us to hone in and utilize them to the best of their

ability. So, keep that in mind as I walk

ability. So, keep that in mind as I walk through the strategy. This makes sense when you stop thinking about UGC as just an influencer play, and you start thinking about this as a way to test

massive amounts of volume. So, now we're going to get into the system setup. Step

one is going to be creator recruitment.

Step two is going to be the briefing process. And then if you do your job

process. And then if you do your job here as good as you can, you leave the production up to them. So, when you're recruiting creators, we found there's four ways that everybody is doing it.

Everybody has their own little way of doing it, but these are four ways that you can do it, and then I'll tell you my favorite. The first is going to be these

favorite. The first is going to be these third-party platforms like Sideshift, Tribe, going there and finding the creators and asking them to work for you. Not my favorite, I'll probably rate

you. Not my favorite, I'll probably rate that one a five out of 10. Very specific

outbound targeted at one specific creator or a few specific creators in your niche. Can be good, but also

your niche. Can be good, but also manual, time-consuming. This one is what

manual, time-consuming. This one is what I've seen probably the best results with, posting an Instagram story and sending them to either a landing page application or setting up a ManyChat

automation for if they slide up and reply. The reason that I think that this

reply. The reason that I think that this works so well is because these are people who are already aware of your brand. They might be customers, which is

brand. They might be customers, which is what we'll get into next, but these are people who already kind of bought into your product, kind of aware of your brand. So, they already know what your

brand. So, they already know what your content looks like, what you're expecting, and we've seen that this is typically the people we can get more volume out of. Or finally, you can

recruit previous customers. Again, these

two are probably the two best. This is

what I would start with if I were you before you start spending time manually doing this. These two aren't going to

doing this. These two aren't going to get you quite as many creators, but they're going to get you people who are more bought into the brand, people who already know about what your product is.

Next is going to be the actual process of writing the brief. And I talked about earlier that this is imperative to the success of any UGC ad that you make whatsoever. So, there's seven parts to

whatsoever. So, there's seven parts to every single brief that we make. The

first being the angle and the persona that we're going after. It's important

that you include this in your brief because you want the creator to understand what you're doing, who you're targeting, and why. The next three are probably the most important and the most crucial part of this because a winning

ad can make you hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars, and no winning ad is an ad with a bad hook. So, your hook type, your hook visual, and your hook copy are imperative. And the reason is,

like we said before, these people are not creative strategists. They don't

always know what they need to be doing to make a good ad, specifically ads. You

can get UGC creators who can get good views on organic videos because they're a creator, but they are not a creative strategist. So, we always call it out by

strategist. So, we always call it out by the hook type. We have a hook bank that we use internally of like 50 or 100 different hooks. Then we tell the

different hooks. Then we tell the creator specifically what we want done in the hook, first three to five seconds of the ad. Then we go into the exact hook copy. This is typically word for

hook copy. This is typically word for word. In some briefs or for some

word. In some briefs or for some concepts, we'll give the creator a little bit more freedom with the body and the CTA. Sometimes we'll just send them a visual reference, but we always

always always do all of these four things extremely word for word, very very specific with these four things.

Next is going to be obviously the body copy. Can be word for word and kind of

copy. Can be word for word and kind of just give them bullet points. Both kind

of work, it depends on the brand more more than anything, the brand and the creators. Next is the CTA copy, again.

creators. Next is the CTA copy, again.

And then finally, the visual direction.

The way that we like to do this is the hook visual is very very very specific visual direction. And then this right

visual direction. And then this right here is more of just what we want them to be doing during the CTA and the body of the video, a little bit looser. But

these four, it's imperative that you're very very specific with the creator here. So, now that you understand the

here. So, now that you understand the setup a little bit, we want to get into how you can consistently make winners.

And that comes down to two very very specific things. Your learnings document

specific things. Your learnings document and how you are iterating on winning ads. So, again, just like we made the

ads. So, again, just like we made the briefs and they were very very specific, we do the same thing with the learnings document. There are a few things that we

document. There are a few things that we always keep track of in our learnings document, especially for UGC. And

listen, I just went through all of this.

I was just in the trenches manually doing all this for three months, and I haven't done that. I haven't set up manual things in quite a while. Just

made little tweaks on SOPs. I literally

did all of this, all of the learning documents, all of the scripts, everything. It's fresh on my mind, and

everything. It's fresh on my mind, and this is exactly what we're doing right now. So, again, for the learnings

now. So, again, for the learnings document, we want to keep track of the personas, angles, and concepts that we're doing. We also want to keep this

we're doing. We also want to keep this on either a weekly or a bi-weekly basis, and then we want to keep track of the results in this learnings document. And

then we always keep a weekly learnings document as well as a master learnings document. So, it's set up in sheets, and

document. So, it's set up in sheets, and you basically have the master learnings document where everything is, and then there's a little tiny one on the bottom on those little tabs for every single week. And then when we're making

week. And then when we're making iterations of creatives, we're changing one of these variables. We're either

going to change the hook, we're going to change the clips or the influencer, and then we are going to change the copy.

Those are essentially three variables that you can change that you can determine this based off of, you know, maybe you have an ad that has a really good hold rate, and you're getting decent cost per acquisition, but your hook rate is low,

that would indicate that you should change that. Maybe the copy on your ad,

change that. Maybe the copy on your ad, maybe you made a brief and three influencers made it and they're living in your ad account and doing well.

That's a place where you could have more influencers do that, or you could have the same influencers change the clips.

And then same thing, maybe you have one influencer who's a very very top influencer, you give them a brief with five to 10 concepts, a few of them work well. These are going to be things

well. These are going to be things where, you know, you keep the influencer the same, you keep the hook the same, and then you're changing the body and CTA copy. All right, so hopefully you

CTA copy. All right, so hopefully you learned a lot from this video. We went

through everything fairly fast, so we'll just do a little review. The beginning

we went over why most ads don't do well, why most people don't see a lot of success with UGC, and how and why that is. And then we went over understanding,

is. And then we went over understanding, you know, UGC by funnel stage and how to elevate your creators. Start them all out with problem-aware stuff and um

product-aware stuff.

Then we went over how to actually recruit the creators, how to write the briefs, and then how to make consistent winners with a learnings document and how to properly iterate. So, we went

over a lot in this video. If this

doesn't seem like something you want to do and you're spending 50 to 100,000 dollars a month or more on ads, and you're looking for a team to do this for you or do this with you, like I said, we've been making thousands

of ads for quite a long time, from static ads to VSLs and now UGC. So, if

this sounds good and you don't want to do this yourself, just click the link in the description. We got tons of case

the description. We got tons of case studies, testimonials, full video explaining exactly how we do what we do.

And if you made it to the end, comment master. Master or learnings, one of

master. Master or learnings, one of those two things if you made it to the end of the video. Don't forget to subscribe. I'll see you in the next one.

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