Every figure on this page links to the organization that produced it, and each was re-checked against that source before publishing. How many of the largest online stores actually show customer or creator video, in our own read of 395 Shopify stores; how much shoppers say they rely on customer photos and videos, from Bazaarvoice, Pew and Ofcom; what brands spend on creator ads and what UGC creators are paid, from IAB, Goldman Sachs, Collabstr and Linktree; what TikTok, YouTube, Meta and Amazon report about creator ads; how many fake reviews and videos Apple, Google, Amazon, Yelp, Tripadvisor and Trustpilot remove; how often creator ads break disclosure rules, from the FTC, the European Commission, the ASA and the ACCC; what peer-reviewed research measures; and where the popular UGC numbers came from.
Only 4.8% of the 395 largest Shopify stores we read played video in a customer- or creator-style section, though 39.0% had some video on the homepage. (Our read)See details
8.6% loaded a UGC or shoppable-video tool and 61.5% a review app, but review widgets showed customer photos or videos on only 5.2% of product pages. (Our read)See details
In Bazaarvoice's surveys, 74% of shoppers (late 2020) preferred to see earlier customers' photos and videos and 65% (2024) relied on UGC; Bazaarvoice sells UGC software. (Bazaarvoice)See details
Only 18% of U.S. consumers in Bazaarvoice's July 2021 survey trusted sponsored social posts. (Bazaarvoice)See details
U.S. creator ad spend reached $29.5 billion in 2024, growing 28.5% a year since 2021 by IAB's estimates. (IAB)See details
UGC-only deals, where creators make ads they do not post, rose to 35% of Collabstr's collaborations in 2025, with an average payout of $154. (Collabstr)See details
Google caught 14 million policy-violating videos on Maps and Search in 2023; in 2021, when its count also included blurry videos, it was more than 5 million. (Google)See details
Apple blocked close to 195 million fraudulent App Store ratings and reviews in 2025. (Apple)See details
About 57% of UK influencer ads were adequately disclosed in 2024 (ASA); only 40% of 576 influencers in the EU's 2023 sweep kept the disclosure visible throughout. (ASA, European Commission)See details
The 9.8x UGC ratio is 79% divided by 8% in one 2019 Stackla survey, and the 4x click-through claim is an undocumented 2015 Yotpo look at its customers' ads. (Stackla, Yotpo)See details
Across 96 studies, online word of mouth correlates with sales at an average of .091: a real effect, far from the multiples in vendor claims. (Journal of Marketing Research)See details
How many large online stores show customer or creator video?
Few. On October 31, 2026 we read the homepage and first product page of the largest Shopify stores on the web, and only 4.8% played video inside a customer- or creator-style section, such as a shoppable video carousel, an "as seen on" strip or a reviews gallery. We started from the Tranco list of the 100,000 most-visited domains (list 7462X) and found 954 that resolve to Shopify's storefront network by DNS, a floor because stores behind their own CDN do not show up that way. We loaded the 400 highest-ranked in a headless browser; 395 homepages and 365 product pages were readable.
Video itself is common: 39.0% of the stores showed a video of some kind on the homepage and 22.7% on the product page, mostly brand-made clips hosted on Shopify or YouTube. Tools built to show customer and creator video are not. 8.6% of stores loaded a UGC or shoppable-video tool, led by Tolstoy (16 stores) and Firework (11), and 10.9% loaded a social or UGC photo gallery. Review apps are the norm: 61.5% loaded one, most often Yotpo (80) and Judge.me (65). Yet on only 5.2% of product pages did the review widget show customer photos or videos, 0.3% (one store) had a video inside the review widget, and 0.0% embedded a TikTok or Instagram player.
A loaded tool is not a visible video. We checked by hand the 30 highest-ranked stores our rules flagged: 11 visibly showed a customer- or creator-style video section, 3 did not, and 16 loaded a tool whose video we could not see in our capture. Of 15 stores not flagged, 2 had a creator-style video section our rules missed. Read the tool shares as adoption and the 4.8% as the better estimate of video a shopper actually sees. Nor can a page read tell whether a "customer" video was made by a customer or paid for by the brand. Store-by-store results are in store-pages.csv.
That gap sits against what shoppers tell surveys. In the vendor surveys below, most shoppers say they want to see other customers' photos and videos before buying; on the largest Shopify stores, customer video is rarely there to see.
How much do shoppers rely on customer photos and videos?
A lot, by every survey that asks, but most of those surveys are run by companies that sell review and UGC software. In Bazaarvoice's September 2024 survey of more than 8,000 shoppers in seven countries, 65% said they rely on user-generated content such as ratings, reviews, photos and videos when deciding what to buy, and 86% said they engage with creator content before a purchase (Bazaarvoice). Bazaarvoice sells ratings, reviews and creator-marketing software, and the survey was run for it by Savanta. A year earlier, in its September 2023 edition, 74% said they trust UGC more than brand-provided content on product pages and 55% said they are unlikely to buy without shopper content (Bazaarvoice).
Video and photos are the part shoppers say they want to see. In Bazaarvoice's late-2020 survey of about 8,000 consumers in six countries, 74% preferred to see previous customers' photos and videos on brand and retailer websites, 62% said they are more likely to buy when they can see both photo and video from earlier customers, and 65% called customers' photos essential (Bazaarvoice). Among 18-34-year-olds, 73% preferred brands to use customers' visual content in their social media (Bazaarvoice). Yet only 21% said a quality review is one with photos and videos as well as text (Bazaarvoice). Gen Z leans furthest: 80% of Gen Z shoppers in the 2024 survey called UGC crucial to their decisions (Bazaarvoice). In a 2026 survey of more than 3,600 members of Bazaarvoice's own Influenster reviewer panel, a group that writes reviews and is not the general public, 76% said they need customer photos or videos before buying an unfamiliar product an AI tool recommended (Bazaarvoice).
Shopping on social video has become normal in the same survey series: the share of shoppers who said they never shop on social media fell from 55% in 2021 to 24% in 2024 (Bazaarvoice), and the share who called themselves passive consumers, reading but never posting, fell from 46% in 2023 to 28% in 2024 (Bazaarvoice).
Sponsored content is trusted far less than unpaid customer content
In Bazaarvoice's July 2021 survey of 9,098 consumers in six countries, only 18% of U.S. respondents said they trust sponsored posts on social media, while unsponsored consumer content was the most trusted kind (Bazaarvoice). 56% said the everyday social media user is the person they trust most to recommend products, against 42% for subject-matter experts (Bazaarvoice). 86% said they seek out authentic UGC before buying a product they have not tried, 80% wanted rules forcing influencers to disclose edited images, and 42% said influencers had not become more authentic in five years (Bazaarvoice). In its early-2020 index, 75% of North American shoppers trusted consumer reviews sometimes or always, 56% named reviews as the e-commerce feature they relied on most, and 41% said they had bought a product an influencer recommended in the past 12 months (Bazaarvoice).
Independent surveys are older and narrower. In Pew Research Center's survey of 4,787 U.S. adults (November 24 to December 21, 2015), 74% said being able to read online reviews is important when buying something for the first time, and 54% of review readers said they pay more attention to extremely negative reviews (Pew Research Center). About one in ten nearly always post reviews of their own, 71% of adults aged 18-49 post at least sometimes, 39% had shared experiences of a company or product on social media, and 45% said reviews help a lot to make companies accountable (Pew Research Center).
Pew's July 2022 survey of 6,034 adults asked about creators directly: four in ten U.S. social media users follow influencers or content creators, rising to 72% of users aged 18-29 (Pew Research Center). 36% of women users said they had bought something after seeing an influencer's post, against 21% of men; among women aged 18-29 it was half (Pew Research Center). 54% of users aged 18-29 said influencers affect what they buy at least a little (Pew Research Center).
Other surveys from companies with something to sell point the same way. Matter Communications, a PR agency that runs influencer campaigns, found in its 2023 survey of more than 1,000 U.S. consumers that 81% had researched, bought or considered a product after seeing it in a friend's, family member's or influencer's post, 69% trusted such a recommendation over the brand's own, and only 11% preferred celebrity influencers (Matter Communications). In its May 2020 survey the matching figures were 82% and 61% (Matter Communications), and in 2023 63% had noticed more sponsored influencer content. Sprout Social, which sells social media and influencer software, surveyed 2,250 consumers in the U.S., UK and Australia for its 2026 report: only 17% check a creator's follower count before deciding, 40% discover products through employees' posts each month, and 44% are uncomfortable with brands using AI influencers (Sprout Social).
Recognising an ad is the other half of trust. In Ofcom's 2025 media literacy research, 73% of UK 13-17-year-olds shown a real paid Instagram endorsement recognised it as advertising, and 68% were both confident and able to spot influencer marketing (Ofcom).
How much do brands spend on creator and UGC video?
In the United States, about $29.5 billion on creator ads in 2024, by IAB's estimate. IAB, the ad industry's trade body, put U.S. creator economy ad spend at $13.9 billion in 2021 and $29.5 billion in 2024, and projects $44 billion for 2026 (IAB). That is a compound growth rate of 28.5% a year from 2021 to 2024 (our calculation). Its survey with Advertiser Perceptions of 453 U.S. ad buyers (July 28 to August 12, 2025) found 48% treat creators as a "must buy", behind social media at 74% and paid search at 60% (IAB).
Brands mostly buy creators for reach, and struggle to prove sales. In that 2025 survey, the most common goals were brand awareness (43%) and new audiences, with online sales or conversions named by 32% (IAB). 40% rank overall ROI as their top KPI, yet nearly 40% call proving ROI their top measurement challenge, and finding the right creators is the most-cited challenge (32%) (IAB). When choosing a creator, 58% rate reputation very important (IAB).
Mid-tier creators (50,000 to 500,000 followers) are the most used, by 61% of buyers; buyers spending $50 million or more a year use macro creators more often than small spenders (62% against 49%) (IAB). About 3 in 4 pay flat fees, 49% use performance-based pay and 48% retainers; 53% reach creators through the platforms' own creator marketplaces and 48% by direct outreach (IAB). Nearly three in four use or plan to use AI in creator marketing, most often for editing content (49%), and 95% have concerns about it (IAB).
Global estimates vary by what they count. Goldman Sachs Research put the creator economy's addressable market at $250 billion in 2023 and forecast $480 billion by 2027, with 50 million creators worldwide, brand deals making up about 70% of creator revenue, and only about 4% of creators earning more than $100,000 a year (Goldman Sachs). Influencer Marketing Hub, which sells influencer-marketing content and tools, estimates the global influencer marketing market at $32.55 billion in 2025 without publishing its method (Influencer Marketing Hub). Meta's October 2026 creator white paper repeats a forecast of $13 billion in paid amplification of creator content for the coming year, without naming the forecaster (Meta).
The one U.S.-listed company that reports creator-sponsored content as its own revenue line shows how small the intermediaries are. IZEA Worldwide's 10-K for 2025 reports total revenue of $31.2 million, of which Sponsored Social, brands paying for creator-made posts, was $27.4 million, and cost of revenue, mainly payments to creators, of $16.2 million (IZEA Worldwide, SEC).
What are UGC creators paid?
Usually a few hundred dollars a video on the marketplaces that publish their data. Collabstr, a marketplace that sells brands access to influencers and UGC creators, analysed more than 21,000 collaborations and 200,000 creators for its 2026 report (Collabstr). UGC creators listed content packages at an average of $180 in 2025, and the average UGC payout was $154, against $255 for YouTube collaborations (Collabstr). 80% of all collaborations cost under $300 and only 2% exceeded $1,000. Collabstr says the average UGC campaign cost fell from $209 to $197, and more than 40% of UGC campaigns come from companies spending under $5,000 (Collabstr). Male creators averaged $205 per collaboration and women $166. The United States accounts for 66% of its collaborations, so these are mostly U.S. prices on one marketplace that skews to small budgets.
The fastest change is UGC made for brands to run as ads, without being posted on the creator's own account. On Collabstr, such UGC-only campaigns were 14% of collaborations in 2023, 15% in 2024 and 35% in 2025; UGC campaigns grew 133% in 2025 while TikTok-specific campaigns fell 48% (Collabstr). Its 2023 data had UGC packages at an average of $356 and the average collaboration at $214 (Collabstr). Collabstr's own reports do not agree on how many creators offer UGC: its 2024 report said 50.29% did in 2023 (Collabstr), while its 2025 report said 26% did a year earlier and 66% in 2024 (Collabstr). We print both.
Marketers report similar bands. In Influencer Marketing Hub's 2026 benchmark survey of more than 600 respondents (field dates not given), roughly 80% of the answers on what marketers pay UGC creators were under $500, 50.00% planned to work with more UGC creators, 87.49% expected influencer budgets to rise and 66.33% ran influencer marketing entirely in-house (Influencer Marketing Hub).
Most creators earn little. In Linktree's survey of 9,576 of its users in 2021, 46% of full-time creators earned under $1,000 a year from creating and 12% more than $50,000; 68% of part-time creators earned under $1,000, 67% had never worked with a brand, and 12% had earned $100 or less from a single brand deal (Linktree). Upwork's Freelance Forward 2023 survey, run by Edelman among 3,000 U.S. adults, found about 14.7 million U.S. freelancers, 23% of them, made influencer-style content such as social videos or livestreams (Upwork Research Institute).
What do the platforms report about creator and UGC ads?
Each platform publishes favourable figures from its own tests, and none publishes the full method. Read these as the platforms' sales claims, measured on their own systems.
TikTok. Spark Ads let a brand run an organic post, its own or a creator's, as an ad. TikTok says its 2022 internal A/B tests found Spark Ads had a 134% higher completion rate and a 157% higher 6-second view-through rate than standard in-feed ads, and that a new profile landing page lifted conversion 69% (TikTok). For North American clients from February 2024 to January 2025, creator content from its TikTok One marketplace boosted as Spark Ads drew a 159% higher engagement rate than non-creator ads (TikTok). Its 2022 #TikTokMadeMeBuyIt ebook reported that 41% of users bought a product immediately after discovering it on TikTok and 79% tag a brand or post a how-to after buying; the hashtag had 12.4 billion views by April 2022 (TikTok). No sample is given for those. In GlobalData research for TikTok Shop (2025), 83% of TikTok Shop shoppers said they had discovered a new product there and 76% had bought from a livestream in the past year (TikTok); TikTok says more than 171,000 small U.S. businesses sell on TikTok Shop, whose sales grew 70% in the year to June 2025 (TikTok). In a TikTok-commissioned Accenture Song study of 1,000 consumers in five Asia-Pacific markets, 76% wanted brands to post more authentic content (TikTok).
YouTube. At its 2026 NewFronts YouTube said its Creator Partnerships platform, formerly BrandConnect, gives brands access to more than 3 million creators (YouTube). In a Kantar survey for Google of 7,621 U.S. weekly video viewers (December 10, 2025 to January 12, 2026), 78% said YouTube has the creators they trust most for product recommendations (YouTube). Advertisers who promoted creator-led Shorts saw a 30% higher average conversion lift, by Google's data for January 2025 to January 2026, and creators who shared channel insights were surfaced 60% more in brand searches (YouTube). A Google-commissioned Circana meta-analysis credits YouTube overall, not creator content alone, with 86% higher long-term return on ad spend than paid social (YouTube). YouTube Shopping's gross merchandise volume grew 5X in the year to July 2025 (YouTube). YouTube paid creators, artists and media companies more than $70 billion in the three years to early 2024 and $100 billion in the four years to September 2025 (YouTube), and more than 3 million channels were in its Partner Program in February 2024 (YouTube). Oxford Economics, in research YouTube paid for, put YouTube's U.S. creative ecosystem at $55 billion of GDP and 490,000 full-time-equivalent jobs in 2024 (YouTube).
Meta. Meta's best-known partnership-ad figures sit on pages that refuse non-browser requests and have no archived copy, so we left them out. Its October 2026 creator white paper cites IPA databank analysis of 220 campaigns for 144 brands that gives creators a long-term ROI index of 151, the highest of any channel analysed, but a short-term index of 99 (Meta). A June 2026 WARC study with L'Oréal and Meta found L'Oréal campaigns using both brand and creator assets returned 35% more than those without creators, with brand outcomes up to 2.7x industry benchmarks (Meta).
Amazon, Pinterest, Reddit and Snap. Amazon's Influencer Program, launched in 2017, runs in more than 20 countries (Amazon). In India, Amazon says the program passed 1.25 lakh (125,000) creators in 2025, 40 lakh (4 million) shoppers found products through creators during the 2025 festive season, creator programs reached 2 crore (20 million) shoppers in the year, and nearly 70% of creator-led purchases came from outside the big metro cities (Amazon India). Pinterest says more than 50% of its users come to shop and that people search it more than 80 billion times a month (Pinterest). Reddit told the SEC its users had written more than two billion posts and 22 billion comments by the end of 2025, with 121.4 million daily active uniques in the fourth quarter, and that it sells brands tools that turn those billions of posts into insights (Reddit 10-K). About one billion posts had been machine-translated (Reddit 10-K). Snap says its Creator Marketplace connects creators with advertisers (Snap 10-K), that the number of creators posting publicly more than tripled in 2024 (Snap), and that from February 2025 creators could earn from ads in Spotlight videos longer than one minute, with 1 million Spotlight views in 28 days as one route to eligibility (Snap).
How much customer content do platforms remove as fake?
Hundreds of millions of reviews a year, by the platforms' own counts, and a growing number of videos. Google says it blocked or removed more than 5 million videos contributed to Google Maps in 2021, more than 7 million in 2022 and 14 million policy-violating videos in 2023 (Google). That is 2.8 times the 2021 count, though the 2021 and 2022 counts also include blurry or low-quality videos (our calculation). No other platform reports removed videos separately. Tripadvisor says travelers shared 38.1 million photos and videos in 2024 without saying how many it removed (Tripadvisor).
Platform and year
Reviews (or ratings and reviews) blocked or removed
Apple's figures are the most complete series. It says it removed close to 195 million fraudulent ratings and reviews in 2025 out of more than 1.3 billion processed, after 143 million in 2024, 152 million in 2023, 147 million in 2022 and 94 million reviews (plus 170 million ratings) in 2021 (Apple). On those totals, at most about 15.0% of what Apple processed in 2025 was blocked (our calculation; Apple gives the total as "over" a figure). In 2021 a further 610,000 reviews came down after publication; in 2025 Apple also rejected 1.1 billion fraudulent account sign-ups and hid nearly 7,800 deceptive apps from search (Apple).
Google removed more than 95 million policy-violating Maps reviews in 2021 and 115 million in 2022 (Google), took down more than 1 million reviews reported to it directly in 2021, restricted more than 900,000 accounts in 2024 and 782,000 in 2025, and received about 20 million contributions a day on Maps and Search in 2023 (Google). Its community shared more than 1 billion reviews in 2025 (Google). Amazon published exact counts of blocked fake reviews for earlier years but says only hundreds of millions for 2025 (Amazon). It says more than 10,000 employees work against fraud and abuse, its broker lawsuits cut off nearly 350,000 people writing fake reviews, it has shut more than 150 websites selling fraudulent services, and its first lawsuit against review brokers was filed in 2015 (Amazon). One broker it sued paid up to $4 for a five-star review that included pictures or videos, by Amazon's account (Amazon).
Review sites report the same pattern. Tripadvisor rejected 7.3% of reviews automatically in 2024 and its staff moderated 4.2 million (Tripadvisor); in 2022 it received 30.2 million reviews, removed 24,521 tied to paid review companies and penalised the ranking of more than 33,000 businesses (Tripadvisor). Trustpilot says 61 million reviews were written on it in 2024, every one of almost 200,000 a day checked automatically, that the vast majority of fake reviews it removes are positive, and that it issued 19,000 warnings to businesses and kept 9,000 consumer warnings on profiles (Trustpilot); it held more than 400 million active reviews by December 2025 and has won legal action against 11 businesses since 2022 (Trustpilot). Yelp issued 688 alerts for paid or suspicious review activity in 2023 and removed more than 207.3 thousand reported reviews (Yelp). Its reports to other platforms about review trading rose 23% in 2023, but those platforms acted on only 54% of them, a share down nearly 30% from 2022 (Yelp). Viral social posts drive review attacks: 592 business pages got alerts after a post went viral in 2023, with more than 35,800 reviews removed, and more than 63,100 in 2025, when Yelp placed more than 1,450 media attention alerts and removed more than 46,200 inappropriate reviews (Yelp). Six platforms formed the Coalition for Trusted Reviews on October 17, 2023 (Amazon); Booking.com said it hosts more than 300 million verified reviews (Booking.com).
Independent research sizes the problem from outside. Luca and Zervas found Yelp filtered about 16% of restaurant reviews as suspicious in 2004-2012 (Management Science), and that weaker restaurants were more likely to commit review fraud. He, Hollenbeck and Proserpio followed about 1,500 Amazon products that bought fake reviews through private Facebook groups in 2020 (INFORMS): the groups posted about 568 requests per group per day, sellers paid commissions averaging $6.24 on top of refunds, the products averaged 4.4 stars beforehand, 84% of matched sellers were in China, and Amazon eventually deleted about 43% of their reviews, after a lag of more than 100 days (Marketing Science). Generative AI is entering reviews: a 2025 working paper found detected AI use in Amazon camera, photo and video reviews doubled after ChatGPT's release, to about 6%, and that detected AI use cut Yelp "useful" votes by 16.6% of a standard deviation (Knight, Bart and Yang); readers rated a review lower simply when told AI wrote it, across three pre-registered experiments (Knight, Bart and Yang). It is not yet peer-reviewed.
How often do creator ads break the disclosure rules?
Often. Every regulator that has checked found a large share of influencer advertising undisclosed or poorly disclosed, though they measure it differently. The UK's Advertising Standards Authority estimates that about 57% of influencer ads on Instagram and TikTok in 2024 were adequately disclosed, from more than 50,000 pieces of content captured from 509 UK accounts (ASA). It found no real difference between Instagram (55%) and TikTok (60%), or between posts, reels and Stories (ASA). Accounts it had first monitored in 2020 improved from 35% to 49%; more than 50% of fashion and travel influencer ads were undisclosed or poorly disclosed, and 4 out of 5 of the failures carried no disclosure attempt at all (ASA). One in every four Instagram items captured was likely advertising, against one in six on TikTok. The ASA received more than 3,500 complaints about undisclosed social media ads in 2024 (ASA).
These are not comparable rates: each measures a different thing on a different sample. The ACCC chose its influencers from public tip-offs, so its sample leans toward problem accounts.
In the European Union, a coordinated sweep by the Commission and national consumer authorities checked 576 influencers in 2023 and published the results in February 2024 (European Commission). 78% were doing commercial activity but only 47% were registered as traders, and 30% gave no company details. Instead of the platforms' paid-partnership labels, many wrote "collaboration" (16%) or "partnership"; only 40% kept the disclosure visible for the whole communication and 34% made it visible without a click or scroll. Of those promoting their own products, 60% did not disclose consistently. 44% had their own websites, and 62% were earmarked for further investigation (European Commission). The Commission's 2024 digital fairness Fitness Check put consumer harm from problems in the digital environment, influencer marketing among them, at EUR 7.9 billion a year (European Commission).
Australia's ACCC found 81% of 118 influencers made posts that raised concerns, from 96% in fashion to 73% in gaming and technology; it picked them using 150 public tip-offs (ACCC). In a separate 2023 sweep of online reviews, 37% of 137 businesses had engaged in concerning conduct, and it examined 24 firms selling fake reviews or review suppression (ACCC). The UK ASA's 2020 check of 35% labelling covered more than 24,000 Stories, and complaints about influencers rose 55% to 3,144 in 2020 (ASA).
Enforcement actions
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission's first wave came in 2016-2017. Lord & Taylor gave 50 fashion influencers a dress and paid them $1,000 to $4,000 each to post it without saying so; the posts reached 11.4 million Instagram users in two days (FTC). In April 2017 FTC staff sent more than 90 letters to Instagram influencers and marketers, advising that a disclosure sit above the "more" cut-off because mobile users see only the first three lines of a post (FTC), and in September 2017 sent warning letters to 21 of them (FTC). In its first review-hijacking case, The Bountiful Company was ordered to pay $600,000 for pooling reviews of new Amazon supplements with older products' (Federal Register). In the UK, the CMA secured commitments from 16 celebrities in January 2019 to label paid posts (CMA), and on 16 October 2020 Instagram committed to prompt users to declare incentives (CMA). Canada's Competition Bureau fined Bell $1,250,000 (Canadian) in 2015 after employees were encouraged to post undisclosed positive app reviews (Competition Bureau Canada).
Fraud that starts on social media is large. People told the FTC they lost $2.1 billion in 2025 to scams that began on social media; more than 40% of those who lost money said it started with something they ordered, and investment scams, often with fake testimonials, cost $1.1 billion (FTC).
What does peer-reviewed research say about customer content and sales?
That word of mouth online lifts sales, modestly. The largest meta-analysis, by Babić Rosario and colleagues in the Journal of Marketing Research in 2016, pooled 1,532 effect sizes from 96 studies and found an average correlation between electronic word of mouth and sales of .091: positive but small, with volume (how much people say) mattering more than valence (how positive it is) (Journal of Marketing Research). A 2015 meta-analysis in the Journal of Marketing by You, Vadakkepatt and Joshi reached the opposite ranking: an average volume elasticity of .236 and a valence elasticity of .417, from 339 volume and 271 valence elasticities (Journal of Marketing). The two disagree on which matters more; both find an effect well short of the multiples in vendor claims.
The founding study of reviews and sales, Chevalier and Mayzlin's comparison of Amazon and Barnes & Noble book reviews, found that better reviews raised a book's relative sales and that a 1-star review hurt more than a 5-star review helped (Journal of Marketing Research). Michael Luca found a one-star rise in a restaurant's Yelp rating brought 5-9 percent more revenue (Harvard Business School), and Brett Hollenbeck found chain hotels' revenue premium over independents fell by more than 50% from 2000 to 2015 as online reviews spread (Journal of Marketing Research). In a 2020 study of more than 280 million reviews on 25 platforms, most review distributions were polarized, which makes them less informative (Journal of Marketing Research).
The one study we found that compares customer-made and brand-made content on the same purchases, Goh, Heng and Lin's 2013 analysis of a retailer's Facebook community, found a demand elasticity of 3.140 for the richness of user-generated content, while marketer-generated content richness had no significant effect, and a valence elasticity of 0.180 for user content against 0.004 for the marketer's (Information Systems Research). Studying YouTube video ads coded on more than 60 characteristics, Tellis and colleagues (2019) found information-focused content reduces sharing and prominent early brand placement hurts it (Journal of Marketing).
Influencer content
A 2025 meta-analysis in the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science by Pan and colleagues synthesised 1,531 effect sizes from 251 papers and found follower and influencer characteristics drive engagement and sales (Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science). Another, by Barari, Eisend and Jain, pooled 571 effect sizes from 135 experiments and found influencers lift engagement and purchase intention, with smaller influencers better at engagement and larger ones at purchase intention (Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science). In Weibo data, Leung and colleagues (2022) estimated that a 1% increase in spending on an influencer raised engagement by .457% (Journal of Marketing). In field data on paid Instagram endorsements for direct-to-consumer brands, Beichert and colleagues (2024) found return on spend was more than three times higher for nano-influencers than for macro-influencers, which cost 18 times as much (Journal of Marketing). Across more than 1,700 influencers, Wies, Bleier and Edeling (2023) found engagement rises with follower count and then falls (Journal of Marketing).
Disclosure has a cost to the brand. A 2020 Journal of Advertising meta-analysis of 61 papers found that disclosing sponsorship lowered brand attitudes and credibility while raising recognition of the post as advertising (Journal of Advertising). Princeton researchers measuring more than 500,000 YouTube videos and 2.1 million Pinterest pins found only about 10% of affiliate content disclosed the relationship, and a user study of 1,791 people found short, unexplained disclosures were not understood (ACM CSCW). When Germany tightened its disclosure rules, Instagram influencers there disclosed more but also posted 12% more sponsored content (RAND Journal of Economics).
What the popular UGC numbers really say
Seven figures recur on UGC-vendor and agency statistics pages. We traced each to the company that produced it. Every one started with a company selling UGC software or services, most measured something narrower than the repeated claim, and two have no method anyone can check.
"UGC is 9.8x more impactful than influencer content" and "79% say UGC highly impacts their purchases"
Both come from one survey by Stackla, which sold UGC software and is now part of Nosto. Its February 2019 "Bridging the Gap" report surveyed 1,590 consumers and 150 marketers in the U.S., UK and Australia (Stackla). 79 percent said user-generated content highly impacts their purchasing decisions, against 13% for brand content and 8 percent for influencer content (Stackla). The 9.8x is not a separate measurement: it is 79 divided by 8 (Stackla). Stackla's report page gives the same sample (Nosto). Its release says the 79% was "up from" 60 percent in 2017 (Stackla), but the 2017 question, as Stackla itself described it, asked about 60 percent for social content from friends and family, not UGC (Stackla), so the rise compares different questions. Stackla's 2021 edition, 2,042 online shoppers aged 18-55 surveyed with Infosurv, put the ratio at 8.7x (Stackla). Roundups still print 9.8x without a date (Kapwing), one recasts it as 9.8x "more authentic" (Billo), and the 79% circulates as 79% (Influee) and, without "highly", as 79% (Archive). Use instead: a 2019 vendor survey of 1,590 consumers found 79% said UGC highly impacts their purchases; the 2021 edition gave 8.7x.
"UGC ads get 4x higher click-through rates and a 50% lower cost per click"
The earliest version we found is a guest post on Shopify's blog dated November 24, 2015, written by the manager of Yotpo's blog, a reviews and UGC vendor (Shopify blog). It says stores that included UGC in their ads saw 4x higher click-through rates and a 50% drop in cost per click, with no sample, platform, period or comparison group (Shopify blog). Yotpo's own page now gives it as customer reviews in Facebook ads: 4x higher click-through and a 50% lower cost per click than a normal Facebook ad (Yotpo). Repeaters drop the Facebook and reviews scope: 4x "than average" and 50% (Bazaarvoice), credit it to "a study by Offerpop" (50%) (SoPost), or to a 2026 report as 4x against display ads (Moburst). Use instead: nothing. It is one vendor's undocumented look at its own customers' Facebook ads in 2015.
"92% of consumers trust UGC more than traditional advertising"
Nielsen never asked about UGC. Its survey of more than 28,000 people in 56 countries (2011, published April 2012) found 92% trusted recommendations from people they know, each source rated separately; in the same survey 47% trusted TV ads (Nielsen). The 92% was not a head-to-head with advertising. It is now printed as 92% trusting UGC more than traditional advertising (WifiTalents), as 92% trusting other people over branded content (Billo), and as 92% trusting peer recommendations over brand messages (Archive). Our testimonial video statistics page has the 92% and Nielsen's later editions. Use instead: Nielsen's own wording, trust in recommendations from people you know.
"Millennials trust UGC 50% more than other media"
Ipsos MediaCT ran the survey for Crowdtap, a UGC and sampling platform, in January 2014 (Ipsos). Ipsos France's summary shows that "user-generated content", which took 30 % of millennials' media time, included conversations with family, friends and colleagues, emails and texts (Ipsos). Adweek reported both 50 percent (Adweek) and, in an earlier standfirst on the same study, 35 percent (Adweek). Crowdtap's own release is no longer online. The 50% is still repeated as 50% (ReferralCandy). Use instead: a 2014 vendor-commissioned survey that counted conversations and texts as UGC.
"UGC gets 28% higher engagement"
It was not engagement. In a March 2012 comScore study with EXPO, which sold user-generated product videos, the brand's whole product line gained 28 points in Share of Choice, a purchase-preference measure, when people saw professional content and user product videos together (comScore). User videos alone lifted the featured product 18.7 points, less than professional content alone at 24.7 (comScore). An earlier 2010 comScore study with EXPO scored twenty-five user video reviews (comScore). It is now repeated as a 28% higher engagement rate (Telescope) and credited to a 2026 report as 28% (Moburst). Use instead: one 2012 test in which user videos worked best alongside professional ones.
"UGC increases conversions by 161%"
It is Yotpo's comparison of shoppers who chose to look at UGC with those who did not: they converted 161% more (Yotpo), across 200,000 stores and 163 million orders (Yotpo). Yotpo's own presenter states it as people who look at UGC converting 161% more (Yotpo). Shoppers who seek out reviews are already closer to buying, so this cannot show that adding UGC causes the lift. Repeaters turn it into a page effect, 161% "when featured on product pages" (Influee), and a UGC-video vendor dates it to 2023 (161%) (Whatmore).
"85% find visual UGC more influential than brand photos or videos"
We found no original. The earliest version we found is an Adweek item describing an infographic by Offerpop, a UGC vendor, with no sample, date or question: 85 percent (Adweek). Bazaarvoice's roundup rewords it as 85% turning to visual UGC over branded content (Bazaarvoice). Use instead: Bazaarvoice's own late-2020 survey, in which 74% preferred to see previous customers' photos and videos.
We started from the questions people search for about ugc video statistics and looked for the organization that actually produced each answer. Every figure on this page sits in an evidence ledger with its source, the exact table or paragraph it came from, the measurement period, the population measured, and the date we checked it. This edition holds 325 figures from 58 publishers.
On October 31, 2026, each of the sourced figures on this page was re-fetched with the fetch cache cleared and matched against the recorded wording: the European Commission's, the UK Advertising Standards Authority's, the CMA's, the ACCC's, the Competition Bureau's and the FTC's own releases and reports (several through Internet Archive captures where the live site refuses scripts); Apple's, Google's, Amazon's, Yelp's, Tripadvisor's and Trustpilot's transparency reports; TikTok's, YouTube's, Meta's, Pinterest's and Snap's own pages and Reddit's and Snap's 10-K filings; IAB's, Goldman Sachs Research's and IZEA's reports and filing; the survey owners' own pages (Pew Research Center, Ofcom, Bazaarvoice, Matter Communications, Sprout Social, Collabstr, Influencer Marketing Hub, Linktree, Upwork); peer-reviewed articles through their abstracts or open full text; and the original pages behind each popular claim. Our own figures come from a DNS scan of the Tranco top 100,000 domains and a headless-browser read of the 400 highest-ranked Shopify stores on the same day, with a hand check of 45 stores. We left out Meta's partnership-ad performance figures (its pages refuse scripts and have no archived copy), PwC's outlook (blocked), and Nosto's current consumer report, whose text is not in its pages.
We only cite the producer: government agencies, regulators, company filings and official posts, and the survey owner's own report. We do not cite statistics roundups, Statista-style aggregators, or salary sites without a public method. We did not bypass paywalls or sign-up forms; where a full report was gated, we used only the figures its publisher states publicly.
Figures marked "our calculation" are arithmetic on the cited numbers, and anyone can reproduce them:
This edition contains no Mark Studios customer data.
Limitations
Most UGC figures come from companies that sell UGC. Bazaarvoice, Collabstr, Influencer Marketing Hub, Matter and Sprout Social sell review, creator or influencer services, and the platforms' figures are their own ad sales claims. We name the seller and the sample each time.
Surveys measure what people say. "Rely on", "trust" and "more likely to buy" are stated attitudes, often from online panels, not observed purchases. The peer-reviewed effects on sales are much smaller than the survey shares suggest.
Our store read sees one visit to two pages. Video that loads only after a click, on another page, or in a format our rules did not recognise is missed, and a loaded tool does not prove a video was shown. Our hand check confirmed 11 of 30 flagged stores and found 2 misses among 15 unflagged ones. Shopify stores behind their own CDN are not in the sample, and the sample is the 400 highest-ranked stores, not all stores.
Removal counts are self-reported and not comparable. Each platform defines fake, fraudulent and policy-violating differently, and several give only floors ("more than").
Disclosure sweeps use different measures. The ASA estimates a compliance rate; the European Commission and ACCC report the share of influencers with concerns, from samples that are not random.
How to cite this page
For a single figure, cite the original publisher named next to it, and link here if the verification trail is useful to your readers. Each figure has its own anchor, so you can link straight to it, for example https://www.markstudios.com/research/ugc-video-statistics#DRV-013. To cite the page as a whole:
Mark Studios. "UGC Video Statistics." Last verified Oct 31, 2026. https://www.markstudios.com/research/ugc-video-statistics
APA
Mark Studios. (2026, October 31). UGC video statistics. https://www.markstudios.com/research/ugc-video-statistics
MLA
“UGC Video Statistics.” Mark Studios, 31 Oct. 2026, www.markstudios.com/research/ugc-video-statistics.
Chicago
Mark Studios. “UGC Video Statistics.” Last modified October 31, 2026. https://www.markstudios.com/research/ugc-video-statistics.
BibTeX
@misc{markstudios_ugc_video_statistics_2026,
author = {{Mark Studios}},
title = {{UGC Video Statistics}},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
url = {https://www.markstudios.com/research/ugc-video-statistics},
note = {Last verified 2026-10-31}
}
Our calculations and the evidence table are free to reuse with attribution and a link to this page. Each underlying figure remains the claim of its original publisher, and some publishers ask for a link when their figures are reused.
We re-verify every figure quarterly and when a major source publishes a new edition. The next scheduled review is January 2027. Corrections go to contact@markstudios.com.
Oct 31, 2026: First published with 325 figures from 58 publishers, each checked against its original source.
Frequently asked questions
How many online stores show customer or creator video?
Few of the largest. On October 31, 2026, 4.8% of the 395 largest Shopify stores we read played video in a customer- or creator-style section, 8.6% loaded a UGC or shoppable-video tool and 39.0% had some video on the homepage.
Do shoppers trust UGC more than brand content?
They say so in surveys by companies that sell UGC software: in Bazaarvoice's September 2023 survey, 74% said they trust UGC more than brand content on product pages. Sponsored posts are trusted far less: 18% of U.S. consumers trusted them in July 2021.
How much do brands spend on creator content?
IAB estimates U.S. creator economy ad spend at $29.5 billion in 2024, up from $13.9 billion in 2021, and projects $44 billion for 2026.
How much do UGC creators charge?
On Collabstr, a creator marketplace, UGC creators listed packages at an average of $180 in 2025 and the average UGC payout was $154. In Influencer Marketing Hub's 2026 survey, about 80% of marketers' answers on UGC creator pay were under $500.
How many fake reviews do platforms remove?
Apple blocked close to 195 million fraudulent App Store ratings and reviews in 2025, Google removed 115 million policy-violating Maps reviews in 2022, and Amazon says hundreds of millions of suspected fake reviews in 2025.
Do influencers disclose paid posts?
Often not. The UK's ASA estimates about 57% of influencer ads on Instagram and TikTok were adequately disclosed in 2024, and Australia's ACCC found 81% of 118 influencers it checked made posts that raised concerns.
Is UGC really 9.8 times more impactful than influencer content?
That ratio is 79% divided by 8% in a 2019 survey of 1,590 consumers by Stackla, which sold UGC software: 79% said UGC highly impacts their purchases and 8% said that of influencer content. Stackla's 2021 edition gave 8.7x.
