User-Generated Content & Authenticity in the Age of AI

There's something deeply ironic about the moment we're in.

We have AI that can generate photorealistic images in seconds, write convincing product descriptions, and even create entire video campaigns without a single human appearing on set. The technology is spectacular.

The output is often indistinguishable from reality. And yet… consumers are trusting it less than ever.

More than 71% of consumers worry about being able to trust what they see or hear because of AI. Only a quarter of people can correctly identify an AI-generated image when shown alongside genuine marketing materials.

The problem isn't that the technology isn't convincing, it's that it's too convincing, and people know it.

I've spent the last two years watching brands race to adopt AI content tools, celebrating the efficiency gains and cost savings.

Some cut their content production costs by 50%. Others scaled their output 10x.

All while a quiet counter-trend was building: consumers craving the raw, unpolished, gloriously human alternative. They're seeking user-generated content like travelers dying of thirst seek water.

This isn't about rejecting technology.

It's about understanding what technology can't replicate: the awkward authenticity of a real person sharing a real experience, shot on their phone, without perfect lighting or a script. In 2025, that imperfection has become more valuable than perfection ever was.

The Authenticity Crisis We're Not Talking About

Let's start with something we've all been noticing: AI has flooded the internet with content that looks professional, sounds authoritative, and feels... hollow.

By 2026, Gartner projects that more than 80% of enterprise software will have AI built in, whether organizations are ready or not. We're not heading toward content saturation… we're already drowning in it.

71% of consumers feel frustrated by impersonal brand communications. Nearly 40% worry about being misled or misinformed by brands using AI. And 46% of people trust a brand less if they learn it's using AI to provide services they assumed were coming from a human.

Here's what keeps me up at night: AI hasn't just created a content problem, it's created a trust problem.

When everything looks polished and perfect, nothing feels real. When every image could be synthesized, every review could be fabricated, every testimonial could be scripted by a language model… consumers stop believing any of it.

The brands winning right now aren't the ones with the slickest AI-generated campaigns. They're the ones brave enough to show up imperfectly, authentically, through the voices of real customers sharing real experiences.

Why User-Generated Content Matters More Than Ever

The data around UGC isn't just compelling, it's overwhelming. 79% of people say user-generated content highly impacts their purchasing decisions. 84% of people trust a brand more when it uses UGC in its marketing. 93% of marketers agree that consumers trust content created by customers more than content created by brands.

But here's what those percentages really mean: In a world where AI can fake anything, the surest signal of truth is content that wasn't created by the brand at all. UGC carries weight precisely because it lacks the polish of professional marketing. The shaky camera work, the genuine enthusiasm, the unscripted reactions… these aren't bugs, they're features.

60% of consumers believe UGC is the most authentic form of content.

Think about that.

Not professional photography. Not influencer partnerships. Not carefully crafted brand narratives. Real people, sharing real experiences, on their own terms.

The economics tell the same story. UGC-based ads achieve 4 times higher click-through rates and 50% lower cost-per-click compared to traditional branded content. Social media campaigns incorporating UGC see 50% higher engagement. Brands utilizing UGC experience 29% higher web conversion rates than those that don't.

These aren't marginal gains. This is the market screaming that authenticity isn't optional anymore—it's the competitive advantage.

The Generational Divide That Matters

The younger the audience, the more pronounced this trust gap becomes.

84% of Gen Z trust brands more when they see actual customers in ads. 70% of Gen Z and 78% of millennials say UGC plays an important part in their buying choices.

But here's what's fascinating: only 24% of 18-24 year olds feel confident in the AI tools offered by major brands. The generation that grew up digital, that should theoretically be most comfortable with AI, they're the most skeptical of it.

They've seen enough deepfakes, enough synthetic influencers, enough AI-generated content to know it when they see it. And they're deliberately choosing the alternative.

Meanwhile, Gen Z spends about 50 minutes more per day on short-form social video and UGC than the average viewer, and 52% say creator-led content feels more relevant than studio or TV programming.

They're not rejecting technology, they're rejecting inauthenticity. There's a difference.

What Makes UGC Work (And What Doesn't)

After studying hundreds of UGC campaigns and watching which ones actually move the needle, I've noticed patterns. The campaigns that succeed share a few characteristics that have nothing to do with production value.

They Feel Voluntary, Not Coerced. The best UGC doesn't feel like a branded campaign—it feels like customers genuinely excited to share. When 64% of consumers have tagged a brand on social using a hashtag, it's because they wanted to, not because they were incentivized.

They Showcase Imperfection. Consumers find UGC 50% more trustworthy and 20% more influential than other media types. That trust comes from visible imperfection—the shaky phone video, the natural lighting, the unrehearsed moment. Polish kills credibility.

They Create Community, Not Just Content. Brands that utilized UGC in segmented campaigns reported an increase of 760% in revenue. That's not because the content was better—it's because UGC turns customers into community members, participants rather than spectators.

They Respect Context. 90% of customers emphasize the importance of authenticity in choosing brands. But authenticity isn't universal—it's contextual. What feels authentic in beauty differs from tech, B2B from D2C. The best brands understand their audience's definition of genuine.

What doesn't work? Manufactured authenticity.

Overly polished "UGC" that's actually brand-created. Fake reviews and testimonials. People can sniff out when UGC looks salesy, and 45% of consumers are more likely to unfollow a brand if it encourages too much self-promotion.

Real Campaigns That Got It Right

Theory is nice. Execution is what matters.

Here are examples of brands that cracked the UGC code:

Coca-Cola's #ShareACoke: The campaign that proves simplicity scales. By personalizing bottles with people's names and encouraging customers to share photos, Coca-Cola turned a product into a social moment. The result? Millions of shared photos and stories, and a 7% increase in consumption that reversed a decade-long decline. What made it work? The barrier to entry was zero—find your name, take a photo, share. No creative brief needed.

Apple's #ShotOniPhone: This campaign is brilliant because it encouraged users to capture and share high-quality photos taken with their iPhones, turning customers into brand ambassadors while demonstrating product capabilities. Apple's entire Instagram feed now revolves around UGC. It's not cheaper than hiring photographers—it's better, because real customers shooting real moments carry more weight than any ad campaign.

ASOS #AsSeenOnMe: Fashion lives and dies on aspiration, but ASOS built something different—a campaign where everyday customers became the models. By encouraging people to post selfies with ASOS apparel, the brand created an endless stream of content that's still active a decade later. Millions have used the hashtag, turning buyers into influencers who promote the brand organically.

Starbucks White Cup Contest: Starbucks motivated customers to decorate a standard white cup and turn it into art, with winning designs used as templates for actual Starbucks cups. The campaign generated nearly 4,000 entries and tapped into something primal: people love creating, and they love when their creation matters.

GoPro's Entire Strategy: GoPro doesn't create content—their customers do. Their entire social feed showcases real people going on real-life adventures, shot with GoPro cameras. It's product demonstration, aspiration, and authentic storytelling in one. The content is free, the trust is priceless.

What connects these campaigns? None of them feel like marketing.

They feel like communities expressing themselves, with brands smart enough to step back and let it happen.

How to Actually Encourage UGC (Without Being f*cking Cringe)

Here's where most brands stumble.

They understand UGC matters, but their execution feels forced, desperate, or just... off. Creating conditions for authentic user-generated content requires thinking differently about the relationship between brands and customers.

Lower the Barrier to Entry: The biggest obstacle to UGC isn't motivation—it's friction. Make participation effortless. Create a clear hashtag, provide simple instructions, show examples of what you're looking for. 64% of consumers have tagged a brand using a hashtag, but only when they know exactly what to do.

Give People a Reason to Care: Not every brand naturally inspires content creation. If your product isn't inherently shareable, create campaigns that are. Contests, challenges, causes—anything that makes participation meaningful. Only 52% of customers want companies to direct them on content to produce, which means you're walking a tightrope between guidance and control.

Showcase What You Receive: Nothing kills UGC momentum faster than brands collecting content and never using it. 74% of customers prefer to see UGC on official web pages. When brands actually feature customer content—on social, in emails, on product pages—it signals that contributions matter. This creates a virtuous cycle: people see others featured, they want to be featured too.

Respect the Exchange: 93% of marketers believe consumers trust UGC more than branded content, but that trust is fragile. If you heavily edit customer content, script their testimonials, or cherry-pick only the most polished submissions, you've defeated the purpose. The exchange is simple: customers share authentically, you feature them authentically. Break that deal and the whole thing collapses.

Think Beyond Instagram: While 28% of ecommerce marketers believe Instagram generates the most engaging UGC, and TikTok UGC has 35% higher watch-through rates, don't ignore emerging formats. Email campaigns that include UGC see 73% higher click-through rates. UGC in segmented email campaigns increased revenue by 760%.

The medium matters less than the authenticity.

The Averi Library Advantage

This is where Averi's approach becomes interesting.

Most brands struggle with UGC because they lack systems for collecting, organizing, and repurposing customer content at scale. Averi's Library solves this through centralized content management.

Upload customer photos, videos, testimonials, and reviews directly to Library folders. Tag them by campaign, product, or use case. When creating new content in /create Mode, that UGC becomes available as context—AI can reference real customer experiences while drafting new marketing materials. When activating experts from the Marketplace, they have immediate access to authentic customer voices.

The workflow looks like this: Customer shares content → Upload to Averi Library → Context available for AI drafting → Expert refines with human touch → Output combines authentic customer voice with strategic positioning. It's the orchestration layer that makes UGC actually usable rather than just aspirational.

Balancing AI Generation with Human Authenticity

Here's the tension marketers are wrestling with: 92% of marketing professionals now use AI in their daily workflows. AI can reduce content production time by 80% and costs by 50%.

It's not going away, nor should it.

But if 40% of consumers say brands "don't get them"—up from 25% the year before—we're clearly doing something wrong.

The answer isn't choosing between AI and authenticity. It's understanding what each does best.

Let AI Handle Structure, Let Humans Handle Soul. AI excels at drafts, outlines, variations at scale. It's terrible at genuine emotional resonance. Use AI to create the framework, then inject real customer stories, actual experiences, unscripted moments. Only 7% of consumers are willing to pay more for AI features, which tells you that efficiency alone isn't a selling point. Authenticity is.

Combine Synthetic With Real. The most effective strategy isn't pure UGC or pure AI—it's hybrid. Use AI to identify patterns in customer feedback, draft initial concepts, create variations. But anchor everything in real customer voices, actual testimonials, genuine experiences. When consumers are exposed to a combination of expert marketing material and UGC, brand interactions increase by 28%.

Be Transparent About What's What. 46% of people trust a brand less if they learn it's using AI for services they assumed were human. The solution isn't hiding AI—it's being clear about where it's used. "AI-assisted, human-reviewed" signals thoughtfulness. "AI-generated" without disclosure feels deceptive. Transparency will be paramount, even if not mandated by law.

Avoid the Deepfake Trap. The temptation to use AI to enhance, improve, or "fix" customer content is strong. Resist it. Research shows people reject algorithmic recommendations even when they outperform humans, especially in subjective matters. The moment you smooth out the imperfections, you've killed what made the content trustworthy in the first place.

Human Oversight Isn't Optional. 92% of marketing professionals use AI, but the successful ones keep humans in the loop. Not as final editors—as strategic filters. Is this message authentic? Does it sound like our customers? Would real people actually say this? These aren't questions AI can answer.

The winning formula in 2025 & Beyond: AI for scale, humans for soul, UGC for proof. Use technology to reach more people, use expertise to craft the message, use customer voices to make it believable.

The Market Reality: UGC Is a Billion-Dollar Industry

Let's talk about what's actually happening in the market.

The UGC market is projected to grow from $5.36 billion to $32.6 billion by 2030. At least 84 user-generated content platforms are currently available, which tells you this isn't a trend—it's infrastructure.

86% of companies today use UGC as part of their digital marketing strategy. 81% of ecommerce marketers agree that visual UGC is more impactful than professionally shot photos or influencer content. Among visual types of content that generate the most customer trust, UGC ranked at the top with 33%, followed by professionally-shot content at 24% and influencer content at 18%.

The economics are particularly compelling. UGC can reduce content costs by over 50%. But more importantly, it increases conversions by 29%, delivers 4x higher click-through rates, and generates 50% more engagement than branded content.

For B2B, the numbers are just as strong. Nearly half of B2B buyers agree that peer reviews and UGC are playing a greater role in purchasing decisions. Over 70% of B2B buyers consume video content created by users during the sales process. B2B marketing has traditionally been more conservative, more corporate, more polished—and it's learning what consumer brands already know: authenticity converts.

What Success Actually Looks Like

The brands getting this right aren't measuring success by content volume—they're measuring it by trust metrics, community engagement, and conversion impact.

Trust Signals: How many customers are voluntarily creating content? Are submission rates increasing over time? Do customers use your branded hashtags unprompted? Consumer perception of UGC as legitimate is 2.4 times higher than branded content, but only if it's actually genuine.

Community Formation: Is your UGC creating connections between customers, or just between customers and your brand? The difference matters. Content shared by employees is 8x more engaging than content shared by brand channels, which suggests that person-to-person connection beats brand-to-person every time.

Conversion Impact: Power Reviews found that 9 in 10 consumers are more likely to buy a product that has photo and video reviews. The conversion rate with UGC present jumped 102% when users actually engaged with it. The content doesn't just sit there—it works.

Sustained Participation: One-time campaigns generate spikes. Sustainable UGC programs create ongoing streams. Look at ASOS—their #AsSeenOnMe campaign launched years ago and is still active, generating new content every day. That's success.

Quality Over Quantity: You don't need millions of pieces of UGC. You need the right pieces that resonate. 43% of marketers say it's very hard to find engaging UGC manually, which is why curation matters as much as collection.

The 2025 Playbook

So where does this leave us?

In a strange moment where the most advanced technology available is pushing us back toward the most human practices. AI has given us the power to generate unlimited content, and in response, we're learning to value the limited, the real, the genuinely created.

The brands that will win aren't those with the biggest AI budgets or the most sophisticated automation. They're the brands that understand this paradox: in the age of artificial everything, authenticity is the only currency that matters.

That means investing in systems—like Averi's Library and Marketplace—that help you collect, organize, and leverage real customer voices at scale. It means thinking of UGC not as free content but as trust capital. It means being comfortable with imperfection, because imperfection signals truth.

Most importantly, it means recognizing that your customers aren't your audience—they're your partners. When 79% of people say UGC highly impacts their purchasing decisions, they're not just consuming content. They're looking for signals of what's real in a world where everything can be faked.

Be that signal.

Let your customers tell your story. Give them the tools, the platform, the recognition. Get out of their way when needed. And when you do use AI—and you should—use it to amplify authentic voices, not replace them.

Because in the end, 90% of customers emphasize the importance of authenticity in choosing brands.

The market has spoken. The question is whether we're listening.

FAQs

Why is authenticity important in marketing?

Authenticity has become critical because 71% of consumers worry about trusting what they see or hear due to AI, and only 25% can correctly identify AI-generated images. When everything can be fabricated, genuine content becomes the strongest trust signal. 90% of customers emphasize authenticity's importance in choosing brands, and 60% believe UGC is the most authentic form of content. In an AI-saturated landscape, authenticity differentiates brands and builds the trust necessary for conversion.

What are user-generated content campaigns examples?

Successful UGC campaigns include Coca-Cola's #ShareACoke, which personalized bottles with names and drove millions of shares; Apple's #ShotOniPhone, where customer photos became Apple's entire Instagram strategy; ASOS's #AsSeenOnMe, which turned customers into models and has generated content for a decade; Starbucks' White Cup Contest, which invited customers to design cups; and GoPro's adventure content, where the entire brand strategy revolves around customer-created footage.

How does user-generated content impact purchasing decisions?

The impact is massive. 79% of people say UGC highly impacts their purchasing decisions, and 40% of shoppers rate UGC as "extremely" or "very" important. 80% say UGC impacts buying decisions, and 82% have thought about buying a new product after seeing UGC from someone they know. The conversion impact is real: brands utilizing UGC experience 29% higher web conversion rates, and UGC presence on product pages shows 102% conversion lift.

What is authentic marketing in the AI era?

Authentic marketing in the AI era means being transparent about AI use, keeping humans in the loop for strategic decisions, and prioritizing real customer voices over synthetic content. It's combining AI efficiency with human creativity rather than replacing one with the other. Brands must use AI to enhance—not replace—human connection, communicate transparently, and respect that 46% of people trust a brand less if they learn AI was used when they assumed it was human. Authentic marketing acknowledges AI's role while ensuring the core message comes from genuine experiences.

How can brands encourage user-generated content?

Make participation effortless with clear hashtags and simple instructions. Offer meaningful incentives like contests, feature opportunities, or causes worth supporting. 74% of customers prefer to see UGC on official brand pages, so showcase what you receive to motivate others. Create campaigns that naturally inspire sharing—think Apple's #ShotOniPhone demonstrating product capabilities or ASOS's #AsSeenOnMe making customers the models. Engage with and thank creators genuinely. The key is lowering friction while increasing meaning—make it easy to participate and worth their time.

Does user-generated content actually work for B2B brands?

Absolutely. Nearly half of B2B buyers agree that peer reviews and UGC play a greater role in purchasing decisions, and over 70% of B2B buyers consume video content created by users during the sales process. UGC increases conversions for financial services by 300%, and over 91% of education marketers believe UGC helps reach potential students better. B2B buyers are still humans who trust peer recommendations. Case studies, customer testimonials, implementation stories, and user reviews all serve as powerful B2B UGC.

How do you balance AI-generated content with user authenticity?

Use AI for structure and scale, humans for strategy and soul, and UGC for proof points. Let AI draft frameworks and generate variations, but anchor everything in real customer experiences. When consumers are exposed to expert marketing material combined with UGC, brand interactions increase by 28%. Be transparent about AI use rather than hiding it. Never heavily edit or "improve" customer content—imperfection signals authenticity. The winning formula: AI for efficiency, expertise for strategy, UGC for credibility.

What metrics should I track for UGC campaigns?

Focus on engagement rates (UGC drives 50% higher engagement), conversion impact (29% higher conversion rates), submission volume and quality over time, hashtag usage both prompted and organic, community growth metrics, and trust indicators. Track how many customers voluntarily create content versus incentivized participation. Monitor click-through rates (UGC-based ads achieve 4x higher CTR), cost efficiency (50% reduction in CPC), and whether UGC drives repeat purchases. 41% of marketers rank UGC as their top-performing KPI.

Why do younger consumers trust UGC more than branded content?

Gen Z and Millennials grew up digital and can spot inauthenticity instantly. 84% of Gen Z trust brands more when they see actual customers in ads, and 70% of Gen Z and 78% of Millennials say UGC plays an important part in buying choices. Yet only 24% of 18-24 year olds feel confident in AI tools from major brands. They've seen enough deepfakes and synthetic content to be skeptical of anything too polished. Gen Z spends 50 minutes more daily on short-form video and UGC, preferring creator-led content over studio programming. They value authenticity over production quality.

Can small businesses compete using user-generated content?

Yes—in fact, UGC levels the playing field. 86% of companies use UGC in marketing, regardless of size, and UGC reduces content costs by over 50% while increasing conversions by 29%. Small businesses often have stronger community connections than enterprise brands, making customer advocacy more natural. Start simple: create a clear hashtag, feature customers on your channels, run small contests or challenges. The average conversion rate with UGC present jumped 102%—you don't need millions of dollars, just genuine customer relationships.