The growth of user content-driven platforms and the appearance of influencer culture has allowed user-generated content to become a standard in the current digital landscape. Nowadays, social media platforms such as YouTube and TikTok are completely reliant on it. However, before publishers decide to feature this type of content on their websites, they should consider its benefits and drawbacks.
What Is User-Generated Content (UGC)?
User-generated content (UGC) refers to any type of content created and shared by online users rather than companies and publishers. This can include social media posts, images, blogs, user-generated advertising, and video sharing.
User-Generated Video Content
With online videos having a global reach of over 90% percent in the second quarter of 2023, it’s not surprising that publishers and brands are using videos over other media. Especially now that most social media platforms have implemented features such as reels, shorts, and stories, user-generated content is at its peak. These videos can be amateur videos, live streams, vlogs, tutorials, product reviews, ratings, and similar.
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Follow UsBenefits of User-Generated Content for Publishers
Publishers usually opt for using UGC with the goal of engaging their audience, improving content quantity, and growing their online presence. Here are some key advantages of featuring user-generated content on your website.
Promotes Authenticity
Authenticity is almost as crucial as quality when it comes to content. What makes a user’s content much more authentic is the real people’s experiences, genuine opinions, and perspectives. This type of content is much more trustworthy. That’s one of the main reasons user product recommendations, reviews, and ratings are more reliable in the eyes of consumers than promotional videos that brands make.
Boosts Engagement
UGC improves engagement by promoting audience interactivity. When your users actively participate by creating content for your platform, it builds a sense of community and fosters an emotional connection. For instance, drawing and photo contests, viral dance videos, and generally user-generated content that gains attention and gets shared over social media are a great way to drive traffic back to your website.
In addition, depending on what type of website a publisher has, interactions such as comments, likes, or shares can provide publishers with immediate feedback. This real-time interaction and response further enhance the sense of authenticity and community.
Improves SEO
UGC can greatly enhance your website’s SEO. Since your audience will be encouraged to create content more frequently, you’ll have an increase in content volumes for your website. With recurring content updates, search engines will pick up that your website is actively maintained and relevant. While planning out your strategy, you should note the following:
- Google highly regards user dwell time when ranking websites;
- UGC reviews and testimonials can be rich with keywords that can boost your SEO;
- Showing customer review scores in your website’s rich snippets, can help your website rank higher on SERPs and increase clickthrough rates.
However, featuring UGC on your website can be a double-edged sword for your SEO. Due to quality control and legality, so bear in mind that you’ll need to manage and moderate this content actively.
Increases Monetization Opportunities
With a greater volume of content comes an excellent opportunity to boost your revenue through monetization. You can monetize user-generated content with ads, sponsorships, product placements, and more. For instance, if you plan on featuring user review videos or generally any user video content on your website, instream video ads such as pre-roll and mid-roll are a great way to monetize and boost your revenue.
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Drawbacks of Using User-Generated Content for Publishers
While UGC can have many benefits for publishers, there are also several challenges publishers face when featuring UGC on their websites. The most prevalent being the lack of content quality control and additional operational costs.
Lack of Content Control
By featuring UGC on their websites publishers will have larger content volumes, and run the risk of featuring:
- Unreliable content — the quality and factual accuracy of UGC can widely vary for a variety of reasons, some of which are international. This can heavily impact the user experience and SEO of a website. Especially if the content isn’t up to standard, accurate, or relevant to your website and users;
- Illegal content — content that does not adhere to local or international laws, i.e., pirated content, copyrighted content;
- Inappropriate content — offensive or harmful content that will damage the reputation of a publisher’s website, especially in the eyes of ad networks and DSPs. No advertiser is willing to risk serving ads alongside inappropriate or inaccurate content. That is why many advertisers avoid promoting their brands on websites with user-generated content. Especially, for publishers looking at AVOD as a reliable source of profit, UGC is not a practical option.
Additional Costs
While UGC by itself may be free content, featuring it on your website comes with an additional level of financial responsibility:
- Moderation costs — to prevent inappropriate, illegal, or irrelevant content, publishers need to invest in moderation tools or personnel that will monitor, filter, and curate UGC. The prices for content moderation tools can vary. This depends on the type of content the publisher has, the volume, and the filters that the tool offers.
- Hosting costs — with large volumes of user-generated content, especially rich media, publishers will have to employ a hosting platform. For content control and security, private hosting platforms are a better fit, however, they are much more expensive.
- Ad revenue sharing — using user-generated content may require publishers to share ad revenue with content creators. These deals can include fixed fees for clicks or impressions, fixed payments, performance bonuses, and similar.
Access TargetVideo’s Exclusive Library of Original Video Content
Instead of using user-generated content, publishers can feature their own original videos, which lowers the risk of revenue loss, as well as helps them avoid legality and quality issues. For those publishers who don’t have video content of their own, TargetVideo offers its Video Content for Publishers. Our exclusive library of brand-safe original videos caters to various niches such as food, parenting, home & living, fashion, entertainment, and similar.
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FAQ
1. What is user-generated content?
User-generated content is any type of online content that is created and shared by online users.
2. What are some examples of user-generated content?
Some examples of user-generated content are social media posts, blogs, videos, product reviews, testimonials, and similar content.
3. How much does UGC cost?
The majority of UGC today is free since users usually contribute their content voluntarily. However, this is not the case with sponsored UGC. With sponsored UGC, users are usually paid to promote a certain product or service.
4. Is user-generated content good or bad?
User-generated content can be both good and bad, depending on how it is used. With quality UGC, publishers can create successful engagement strategies. However, likewise, without quality control, UGC can lead to loss of traffic, user dissatisfaction, and can damage the website’s reputation.
