Instagram tests UGC sharing tool to help brands bridge gap with creators

First Snap, now Meta, have made the move to close the gap between brands and creators on their platforms.

Last week, Meta-owned Instagram announced that it’s testing out a new feature that will allow brands to share UGC (user generated content) in the app to promote their products, without the paid partnerships label.

“Partnership ads are the most performant and transparent way for advertisers and their partners to run ads together,” Instagram said in a blog post. “Campaigns that combine partnership ads with business-as-usuals (BAU) ads drove 53% higher click through rates, 19% lower cost per actions, and 99% probability to outperform BAU ads alone.”

In an interview with PMW, Snap explained how it is also shifting its focus to creators, in hope that brands will follow. And with 70% of consumers considering UGC reviews or ratings before making a purchase, Kyle Wong, CSO at Emplifi and founder of UGC platform Pixlee, said the business case for this is clear.

“Instagram's plan to expand content collaboration, putting UGC at the forefront is further evidence of the value social-proof content has,” he said. 

“The fact that Meta is investing resources into bridging the gap between brands and content creators shows this is a topic marketing companies should get serious about. Rather than seeing this new development as a threat to our own product or services, it's an opportunity as it helps brands learn more about UGC as a topic. Ultimately, this can peak interest among marketers looking to scale, which can pique their interest to explore other tools that can span across platforms.”

Instagram’s blog post further explained the update: “Advertisers can now boost more types of organic Instagram content as partnership ads, including branded content with the paid partnership label, Instagram Collab posts, @mentions, people tags, product tags, and other content without the paid partnership label, as well as continue to create new partnership ads in Ads Manager without an existing post. We’re refreshing permissions to support these additional use-cases and make partnership ads even easier to use.”