Read on to see how we’re persevering through platform changes, what formats are still printing and how we’re adapting the internal team to be stronger than ever.

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Storytime Content Is Winning

Our top four videos this month all came from iMessage-heavy storytime videos. The combination of an engaging story to follow along (in the form of text messages) along with an AI-made song creates the perfect entertainment piece for brain-rotted consumers. They’re entertained visually and audibly. Here’s an example of a video that earned almost 10M views:

This video obviously did numbers for the entertainment value alone, more so than the product itself (AI song maker). So, for these hyper-viral videos the next most important step is always a comment reply video.

The comment reply on this one pulled 120K views, huge for something that's almost entirely product-forward. There's a lot of discourse right now on X and LinkedIn about UGC being "too top of funnel" to actually convert. But that's only true if you stop at the viral video. Done right, the viral video is what earns you the attention, and the comment reply is what turns that attention into actual product understanding. You couldn't get 120K people to sit through product-forward content off the bat.

Now, it is still possible to go viral for product-forward videos. This video earned 1.2M views:

None of this works if the product isn’t the right fit for it. I hope seeing our tools across different products and formats gives you something to actually test on whatever you’re building!

Hear it From Our UGC Engineers

This month, I asked the team which content they are seeing work well across campaigns. Here’s what they said:

• Sofi called out exactly what that Printify video was doing, "caveman concept" videos, the blunt, dumbed-down explainer style, tend to win because creators can iterate on them fast. More reps, more shots at a winner.

• Holly said slideshows shouldn't be counted out either, even with talking videos dominating everything right now. This simple two-slide carousel earned 150k views:

• Carly's noticed videos that call out a stereotype of a type of person consistently perform, because people love being perceived, even (especially) when it's a little bit of a callout.

Solving TikTok Shadowbans

TikTok’s cracking down hard on new accounts right now, and “shadowban” is the word every creator (& founder) reaches for the second their views dip.

Here’s the thing though: nine times out of ten, it isn’t one. This means that a “shadowban” is absolutely avoidable. So before you blame your low-performing campaign on a shadowban, read this:

The single best fix is warming the account up before you begin posting product-forward content. Before any branded content goes up, post 1-2 loose, high-engagement videos with zero brand language a few days before the first real post goes live. Here’s an example a finance app did:

Then, ramp posting slowly instead of dumping 3+ videos on day one. Something like 1 video the first day, 2 the next, then 3 and so on.

If views are still low after that, there’s two types of shadowbans you might be facing:

1. Traditional suppression (the common one). Your account’s internal reputation/trust/quality score drops and your reach lowers. This fluctuates constantly and is totally normal. It’s recoverable by posting high quality content and engaging with the FYP. This is what 9 out of 10 “shadowbans” actually are.

2. The new account-level restriction (since ~March/April 2026). An actual hidden restriction on the account, invisible to you in-app. Support has confirmed these exist, often labeled “Abnormal Interaction Behaviors.” It’s been hitting a lot of UGC accounts thanks to TikTok’s automated moderation. You can’t post your way out of this one, it has to be appealed/removed by Support. You know you might have this restriction level if:

   1. Less than 100 views on every single video

   2. For You feed traffic is ~0% on all new videos

   3. No “Add to Story” button on any new video where it should appear.

Before you assume either one though, rule out the basics first that might be suppressing views: content still under review, an account posting too fast right out of the gate, private account settings, blacklisted words in captions or on-screen text, reposted or barely-edited content, or just low watch time and weak engagement spread. All of these factors also can resemble a true shadowban.

If you are facing a traditional suppression shadowban, follow these steps:

1. Pause posting for a bit.

2. Change your typical formats.

3. Post daily for a week.

4. Then ramp up to normal posting cadence with high quality content.

If it’s the account-level restriction: you need Support to lift it, posting won’t fix it. Truthfully, I’d recommend just making a new account.

For most people, if your account is healthy and you’re still facing low numbers, you have a content problem.

What to steal: don’t wait for a campaign to prove itself before you start protecting it. Warm every new account up for a few days before you post anything product-forward, and if views stall out later, check watch time and engagement spread before you say the word shadowban (please, I’m sick of hearing it).

Company Updates

Our team started posting on X + LinkedIn. For two years, every single Playkit lead came from my LinkedIn and X, zero marketing spend. Incredible way to build, but it also means our whole distribution depends on one person’s schedule (mine). So in July, Alexis, Leila, Holly, Carly, Alex, and Sofi all started posting on LinkedIn and X about what they’re seeing as they run campaigns day to day. Follow them for some great tips.

Big push on hiring creators. Last month was all about driving more sales so naturally, this month is all about increasing our bandwidth for more campaigns. Funny how quickly the pendulum swings, right? We’ve finally automated our vetting and training system and the creators coming out of it are INCREDIBLE. Can’t wait to show you more soon.

I was on three podcasts this month! Nathan’s Personal IPO, Adapty’s SubHub podcast, and Starter Story. My personal favorite was this one I did with Freddy in Central Park.

I spent most of July out of office. 10 days fully offline in Norway (highly recommend) then the rest of July in NYC. Still the most validating way to check if what you built actually holds up: leave it alone for ten days and see what breaks. Nothing did :)

That’s all for now! See you next month.

Keep creating!

Julia + Playkit Team

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Read on to see what we learned this month and how you can apply it to your own campaigns!

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Shareable Content Wins

All of our videos this month strove to optimize for one engagement metric: shares.

As we know, the traditional shocked face + demo of the app is OUT. We popularized this back in 2024 and marketers are still trying to do this.

Though, consumers can smell this format a mile away, content today needs to actually have VALUE: entertainment, education or emotion. The three E’s as I like to call them.

Our shareable content shone with two specific campaigns this month: SuperShift and Quizlet.

SuperShift is a scheduling app for shift workers. The winning format wasn’t a demo or a feature walkthrough, instead it was content that makes someone think “this is literally me” and gets sent to a coworker who will also relate.

We know this works not only for brand awareness, but for conversion when we take a peek into the comments.

With organic marketing, your job is to chameleon to how people in your niche are already talking about your problems. Create a conversation that gets people talking about their pain points that your problem solves. They trust you, because they relate to you. So when you suggest a product to them, they’re that much more likely to convert. Welcome to modern day word of mouth.

This is the same lesson behind the format we cracked on Quizlet earlier in the month that started ripping 4M views a week. Make the video an experience the viewer gets to participate in, then tell them exactly what to do next. Send this to your study group, test your boyfriend, find my set on Quizlet.

What to steal: engineer your content around shares. One viewer who you reach that might download your app should be sending it to another who will download as well. This is the fastest way to drive conversions.

Identify the shared problem, speak to it in a relatable way & deliver the solution.

Company Updates

We solved our hiring problem. Two new UGC Engineers, Carly and Alex, officially started this month! For what felt like forever, our problem was always our team bandwidth - we couldn’t keep up with our level of inbound. We’ve finally(!!) solved that problem (for now) - after months of interviews followed by a 4-week training program for our candidates, we’re so excited to Carly and Alex to officially join us.

Now, our bottleneck moves to sales. Good problem and refreshing to face different challenges. That’s where my focus goes to next!

Look at how big our team is now 🥹

Trackr got an Opportunities tab. We’re continuing to improve and optimize our creator experience. Creators now apply to and get accepted onto campaigns directly inside Trackr instead of through Slack. Faster for creators, cleaner for our UGC Engineers, and one more piece of the operating system running end to end inside the product we built. We’re keeping this internal for now, external updates to come soon.

I’m in NYC. Spent June meeting founders and getting coffee with people I’d only ever known on the internet. I’ll be back for the last stretch of July too. If you’re around and want to say hi, reply to this email!

That’s all for now! See you next month!

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Keep creating!

Julia + Playkit Team

Read on to see what we learned this month and how you can apply it to your own campaigns!

What’s Working: Skits

The best videos on social right now combine entertainment with inspiration. With more and more companies doing UGC marketing, viewers aren’t as quick to fall for low-production value content. Instead, they want to feel entertained and inspired.

Your content needs to give them the energy to actually make a move (aka download your app/buy your product). One of the newest ways we’re doing this at Playkit is through more skit-like content.

A few of my favorites from this month:

The key to this style of content is to leverage the comment section (as always). As consumers are catching on to paid content more and more, a successful UGC campaign will treat content as truly top of funnel.

Your job is to bring in viewers who are intrigued in your niche/share some similar pain points. Once you’re there, the work moves middle and bottom of funnel in the comment section - have creators reply to all comments plugging the app name and do video replies to top comments going through the product in more detail.

ps. you can verify you brought in the right audience by analyzing your comment section sentiment in Trackr. We use this at Playkit when iterating off our videos to ensure we’re spending our resources, time and attention in the right places.

If videos aren’t reaching your correct audience (ie. lower “on topic” score), then you’re likely have a content-fit issue. You’ll want to iterate your strategy to ensure it’s reaching the people you actually want your videos to go to.

Try Trackr

How We Optimized our Operations (& how you should too)

For most of Tech UGC’s short history, the iteration loop has been: post a video, watch the view count, check download numbers, guess what’s working, post another one.

UGC and organic marketing was the most guess-heavy distribution method (until now!!!). We spent May closing that gap inside Trackr, and it’s changing how we iterate on our content - and how you should too!

Here’s what we got up to:

Comment sentiment became more important than views. A video with 200K views and a comment section full of “where do I get this” is much more powerful than a video with 1M views and a comment section full of “this is an ad.” Trackr now runs comment analysis on every post, so our engineers can see whether a video reached the right audience and whether that audience is actually moving toward the product.

How to adopt this: stop grading creators and content on views alone. Pull your top videos and read the first fifty comments on each. Make sure creators are paying attention to videos where comments are mostly about the pain point or niche. They should be responding to all comments, recreating the video and iterating off of that content.

If you want to get fancy - use our comment sentiment analysis feature in Trackr to do this at scale.

Attribution finally connects content to revenue. The oldest problem in organic UGC is that you cannot prove which video drove a download. We shipped attribution in late April: connect your Stripe or App Store Connect to Trackr and see which specific videos are driving installs and revenue, not just views.

This feature has changed the game for us. We’re able to work closer with our clients on videos that are actually moving the needle, suggesting which videos to boost with paid ad spend based off conversion (not just views).

How to adopt this: before you put a dollar of ad spend behind a piece of organic content, confirm it is driving signups, not just impressions. The highest-view video and the highest-converting video are usually two different videos.

Track Organic Attribution

Automated reminders keep nothing from slipping. Our UGC Engineers are managing up to 50 creators at a time. That’s a lot to keep in their heads. To help them out, we built reminders into the engineer workflow so the system flags what needs attention before it becomes a problem.

Our UGC Engineers now start the week with a generated list of exactly what is overdue, what is breaking out, and what is going quiet, pulled live from Trackr. Thank you Claude!

How to adopt this: grab your Trackr API key (Settings > API Key), open Claude, and paste the prompt below. It pulls a real to-do straight from your campaign data, so you start every day knowing exactly what needs attention.

You are my UGC campaign co-pilot. My Trackr API key is [paste key]. The base URL is https://app.ugctrackr.com/api/external/v1 and you authenticate with a Bearer token. All dates are Pacific time.

Pull my active campaign and build me a to-do list for today. Specifically:

1. Any video that crossed 10K, 50K, or 100K views since yesterday. For anything past 50K with no reply video out, flag it as urgent and tell me to deploy a reply today.

2. Any creator who hasn’t posted in 48+ hours, flagged as at-risk.

3. Videos pending review.

4. My top 3 videos this week, and what the comment sentiment says about whether I pulled the right audience.

5. One thing to double down on and one thing to fix.

Give it to me as a short prioritized checklist, not a report. Re-pull live from the API every time I ask a follow-up.

Swap “today” for “this week” when you want the wider view. Run it every morning and it becomes the first thing you check.

Company Updates

We got featured on Starter Story. Eighteen months ago I was watching Starter Story to learn how to build a company. This month I was on it! I walked through how to grow an app to its first 1,000 paying users with zero ad spend. Surreal experience for me.

Watch the Feature

Trackr had its biggest shipping (& MRR) month yet. Comment analysis, automatic TikTok-to-Instagram cross-posting, one-click video download for ad repurposing, full attribution through Stripe and App Store Connect, and open API access all went live. If you have not seen Trackr lately, it is a different product than it was sixty days ago and we’re happy to walk you through it!

Book a Trackr Demo

Two new people joined. Jamie came on as our Strategy Lead and is already sharpening how we run campaigns end to end, complete with campaign health dashboards and strategy revamps. Natalie joined as an intern focused on creator sourcing and mocked up something in her first week that may change how we operate entirely (I love interns).

We spent some in-person time at Playkit HQ. Nick and Alexis (Head of Campaigns) flew out to onboard our newest intern: Natalie. Nothing feels as good as some quality in-person time, but man do we get distracted! Good to be back doing some heads-down work remotely after we realigned.

We raised the floor for creators. We rebuilt our creator tier structure and shipped a feature that lets every creator see their average views per video and exactly how far they are from the next tier and pay bump. We’re gamifying the creator experience and already seeing how it improves performance.

Claude is now central to how the team works. Nick pushed the entire team to build Claude into their daily workflow this month, and our output roughly 10x’d. The reminder systems, the weekly engineer workflows, the comment analysis at scale: most of it runs on this now. It is the difference between a team that scales with headcount and one that does not.

I’m building in public. After doing it on Twitter for a while, I’m officially committing to founder-led video and taking it to Instagram. Follow @playkit.xyz for the behind-the-scenes of how we actually run this (and to cheer me on)!

Follow Playkit IG

We’re hiring!

We’re focused on big growth this year, especially for UGC Engineers. UGC Engineers own our campaigns from creator management, strategy, and client relations. If you know anyone who’d be a good fit or you’d like to toss your hat in the ring, check out our application:

UGC Engineer Application

What a month! We’ll see you next time.

Keep creating!

Julia + The Playkit Team

Read on to see what we tested, learned and the formats that crushed it in April.

Talking Videos on Top

Our top three videos this month (accounting for almost 20M views) were all talking videos. No surprise here, as we saw similar results in March.

As we know, consumers are becoming increasingly more aware of when content is trying to sell them something, so your content needs to increasingly feel more organic to actually win on social. Here are some of my favorites:

We’ve come a long way from what UGC used to look like just over a year ago, it’s certainly not over but creativity continues to win here.

Don’t Sleep on Instagram

Another interesting find: while we’ve historically put most of our eggs in the TikTok basket, we found that Instagram posts are pulling their own.

5 of our top 12 videos in April were IG posts. 100% worth cross posting for another shot on goal.

We’re actually building toward a feature that will cross-post TikToks to IG automatically through Trackr - more to come on that soon.

Company Updates

We hit 1 billion views.

18 months ago when we launched Playkit I was nervous to get our first million view video. Now we’re at 1.1B and climbing even further!

Trackr launched attribution.

We solved one of the biggest problems in organic marketing - attribution.

Trackr now connects to Stripe and App Store Connect, which means you can see which specific videos are driving users and revenue, not just views.

Check out Trackr

Trackr had its highest revenue month.

April was Trackr’s strongest month on record and we’re getting lots of customers who are actively moving away from competitors.

Trackr has always been a fun project for us as we truly build it to support Playkit’s internal agency systems. As more people build UGC in-house, we’re glad Trackr can support them as well.

Book a Trackr Demo

We introduced Campaign Support Specialists.

We formalized a new support layer inside our UGC engineer workflow: Campaign Support Specialists. Their job is to handle creator outreach, research, and first-pass review videos so that UGC Engineers can stay focused on the higher-leverage work: strategy, iteration, and client communication. It’s the operational change that lets one engineer run four campaigns without burning out, and it’s one of the things that makes the UGC Engineer role at Playkit structurally different from what you’d find anywhere else.

We’re hiring!

We’re focused on big growth this year, especially for UGC Engineers. UGC Engineers own our campaign from creator management, strategy, and client relations. If you know anyone who’d be a good fit or you’d like to toss your hat in the ring, check out our application:

UGC Engineer Application

What a month! We’ll see you next time.

Running a consumer app and want to see what this system could do for your growth?

Book a Call

Keep creating!

Julia + The Playkit Team

We crossed 31.2M views across 8,673 videos, launched two of our biggest campaigns to date (Cash App and Quizlet), got featured in Forbes, and hired two new full-time UGC Engineers. We also shipped a big Trackr update that changed how we pay and manage our creators.

Below, we’re breaking down what worked, what we learned, and the format that dominated March across nearly every campaign.

The Format That Won March: Talking Videos

If there’s one thing March confirmed, it’s that talking videos are having a moment.

Not scripted product demos. Not hook-text overlays with B-roll. Just a creator, on camera, talking directly to the viewer like they’re a friend who needs to hear something.

The videos that topped our charts this month were almost all talking-head format: talking about emotional growth for mental health apps, walking through why Quizlet actually changed how people study, and how people’s lives have changed since getting sober.

We’ve been building out our framework for winning talking video formats internally. Anna, one of our UGC Engineers, put together a video on exactly how to make a great talking video:

Hint hint: send this to your creators!

Talking Video Breakdown

Our viral talking videos each performed well for slightly different reasons. Here are three frameworks to create high-converting content with:

1. The Aspiration Hook

@via.healsmy life has drastically changed in only 4 months. #sobriety #sober #recovery #gardening #sobercurious

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I can not emphasize enough the importance of understanding the psychology of your viewer. For this campaign, an app that helps encourage sobriety, it was important for our creators to remember that the target audience is people who want to become sober.

That being said, our content strategy centered on inspiration and encouragement, showing potential users of the app what their lives could look like if they went through with this behavior change, with the help of the app being promoted.

Aspiration goes a long way, especially for products that require a fundamental change in a person’s day to day life. Of course, social proof helps with this as an added push (look at the like counts on those comments!).

2. The Meme

Funny, educational content always performs well on socials. In fact this video broke out on both Instagram AND TikTok. The key to winning the meme format is to name-drop the product like you would in a normal conversation.

This is easy to replicate with household brand names (like Quizlet), but testing this format with lesser-known brands encourages TikTok users to comment asking “what app are you talking about?”, promoting a viral conversion loop.

3. The Advice

@healingwith.kennedyget yourself out of that dark place, get aurie and be consistent, love! #selfhelp #MentalHealth #advice #toughlove #auriepartner

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People scroll on social media to feel something. They’re looking for a dopamine hit, they’re looking to feel better than they currently feel.

Often, they’re looking for someone to point them in the right direction, going to the wisdom of TikTok posters for connection and advice they likely don’t get elsewhere in their life.

Just like on X or LinkedIn, most people engaging on the app are purely consumers. Creating content and giving yourself a voice already positions you in a place of power - the more confident you sound, the more people will listen to the advice (and product recommendations) you have to share.

Company Updates

We launched Trackr 2.0 publicly. On March 9, we announced Trackr 2.0 to the world. The positioning: the infrastructure behind 1B+ views and 10M+ downloads for apps like Quizlet, Substack, and Cash App. We automated creator payouts through Trackr and gave our Trackr users the exact playbook we use at Playkit to run campaigns operationally. It’s been fun to build alongside so many great founders and teams.

Try Trackr

We were featured in Forbes. On March 17, Forbes published "1,200 Videos A Month: Fintech's New Marketing Looks Homemade", and our Cash App campaign was the lead example. Two years ago I was a marketing intern making TikToks in a college dorm. Reading that headline was surreal. The article put numbers to what we've been saying for years: Playkit campaigns average $3.87 CPM, compared to $8-14 on Meta and $4-10 on TikTok paid ads. And unlike paid placements, UGC posts sit on the platform and keep compounding after the campaign ends. Mainstream media is catching on. This is a good moment for the category.

We hired 2 new UGC Engineers. Leila Hazen joined as a full-time UGC Engineer in early March and immediately led the Quizlet launch to some of our fastest early breakouts ever. Tinka Moller started as a full-time UGC Engineer in the final week of the month. Both are exceptional. As we grow, our focus is less about stacking headcount and more about giving each person on this team the environment to do the best work of their career. I love our team.

On that note: I’ve been thinking a lot about management. Every person on this team is world-class at what they do. Which means my job isn’t to manage them, it’s to create the conditions where they can perform at their ceiling. This month I went deep on what that actually looks like individually: not just one-size-fits-all encouragement, but understanding how each person thinks, what drains them, and what recognition means to them specifically. If you lead a small team, I’d strongly recommend doing the same. I wrote about how I did this here.

We started the Playkit Dinner Series. In San Francisco mid-month, Nick and I hosted a 12-course omakase with some of the best founders and operators in consumer tech. The room included people from Andreessen Horowitz, Locket Labs, Yelo, Retro, and a handful of Y Combinator companies. Most of them started as internet friends. Sitting down with them in person for real conversations (growth strategy, founder-life balance, what’s next in media) was a reminder of why building in this world is worth it. We’ll be doing more of these. NYC is next.

It’s been an incredible Q1, I can’t wait to see what the rest of the year has in store for us. As always, share your growth stories + questions with me - I want to cheer you on!

Running a consumer app and want to see what this system could do for your growth?

Let's talk!

Keep creating!

The Playkit Team

Rohan walks us through how he went from a COVID-era college grad pestering Colin & Samir weekly to running content strategy for one of the biggest creators on the planet, what he learned posting hundreds of videos before finding a playbook, and why most brands are still approaching TikTok completely wrong.

We get into the real mechanics of virality: the single image you want stuck in people’s brains, why manufactured moments beat creative briefs, how he pulled off a live 8-hour Kevin from The Office stunt for Ramp, and why giving creators “creative control” is mostly a cop-out.

If you’re a CMO, founder, or marketer trying to figure out what actually works in 2025, this is the playbook.

Timestamps:

]6:09 — How Rohan got started in the creator economy post-COVID

07:28 — Annoying his way into Colin & Samir (and why it worked)

08:30 — Getting introduced to Jimmy and joining MrBeast

10:17 — Learning TikTok from scratch: 100 videos, run the data, iterate

11:24 — Making Jimmy feel like a TikToker + why brands still aren’t trying right

16:49 — Why brands need to be inside the community, not above it

17:39 — Breaking down the Ramp x Kevin from The Office live activation

22:03 — The “image in the brain” theory: designing content to get clipped

26:37 — Streaming, clipping, UGC: Innovator’s Dilemma for creators

30:00 — Why influencer marketing needs moments, not just creative briefs

33:03 — CMO advice: post daily, nail your hooks, budget reality check

But, they all come to me with the same problem: they can’t figure out how to run it at scale.

Which, as it turns out, is great for our agency, Playkit, where we run end-to-end UGC campaigns for teams like these: 200+ creators, nearly 1B views, 10M+ downloads. We’ve proven over and over that a well-run creator program is one of the highest-ROI distribution channels in consumer tech. Some of our teams see CPIs as low as $1.33.

We’ve found, though, that a “well-run” UGC system takes a lot of manual work. Even at Playkit, the operations were crushing us. Coordinating strategy briefs and deadlines with part-time creators. Missing breakout videos until days after they popped. Paying 50+ creators manually every month. We were drowning in it, and this is literally our full time job.

So we built a system to fix it. And now, Playkit couldn’t run without it.

Welcome to Trackr 2.0.

Try Trackr for Free

What’s New in Trackr

Every creator on your roster knows exactly what they need to do, gets notified when they fall behind, and gets paid more when they perform. The leaderboard makes performance visible and ties directly to pay, so your creators compete to be your best without you managing it.

Every settings default in Trackr is how Playkit actually runs its campaigns. The tier structure, the pay framework, the brief templates, we’re sharing it all. You can keep it exactly as is or make it your own.

Below is a full walkthrough of what shipped and what it means for your program.

Plus, something we’ve been building quietly: first access to Playkit’s top 1% of creators, matched directly to your product. Trackr subscribers get in first. More on that below

Creator Portal

Every creator you work with now has their own dashboard inside Trackr. They can see their active campaigns, submit content for review, check their tasks, track their ranking on the leaderboard, and see exactly what they’re getting paid. They stop messaging you for updates because everything they need is already there.

What this means for you: Less time managing creators, more time running campaigns.

Onboard your creators

Creator Payouts + 1099s

Paying 50+ creators used to mean exporting spreadsheets, doing the math manually, sending individual transfers, and dealing with 1099s at year end. Payout is now built directly into Trackr. Payouts calculate automatically based on performance, send to creators, and generate 1099s.

What this means for you: A payout system that runs itself. No chasing, no manual transfers, no year-end scramble.

Automate creator pay

Creator Manager

Every creator on your roster in one place: active campaigns, individual performance, task completion, video review manager, and payment history. Before Trackr, knowing which creators were actually driving results meant digging through campaign-level data and piecing it together manually.

What this means for you: Know exactly which creators are performing, who’s behind on deliverables, and who to double down on.

Optimize creator performance

Slack Notifications

When a creator’s video hits a milestone or starts going viral, you get an instant Slack alert. No more checking the dashboard every hour hoping something popped.

What this means for you: Catch your winners early and react fast: reply to comments, boost the post, brief more creators on the same angle while it’s hot.

Stay up to date

Instagram + TikTok Tracking

Most teams are manually pulling views from two platforms, matching accounts to creators, and doing the math in a spreadsheet. Trackr links both a creator’s TikTok and Instagram to a single profile. Views, CPMs, and performance track automatically across both: one creator, one profile, one payout calculation.

What this means for you: Cross-platform tracking and payment calculations that actually work. One creator profile, all their content, one payout.

Bonus: Facebook and YouTube tracking coming March 13th.

Start tracking

Playkit Playbook Included

Every Trackr account comes loaded with the templates, frameworks, and guides Playkit uses to run campaigns at scale. Creator contracts, brief templates, pay structure frameworks, UGC strategy handbooks. You're not starting from scratch, you're starting with the playbook behind 1B+ views and 10M+ downloads.

Access the Playkit Playbook

Coming Next Week: The Playkit Creator Network

Most creator marketplaces give you a firehose. Hundreds of applicants, mostly low quality, and you spend more time filtering than running campaigns. The Playkit Creator Network is the opposite. Every month, we hand-pick our top Playkit-certified creators and match them directly to your product. Vetted, trained, and proven, the same creators running campaigns for Quizlet, Substack, and Flo Health. It’s a white-glove matching service built on top of Trackr. Quality matches, monthly.

It launches next week, and Trackr subscribers get first access to the beta.

Claim your spot

Founding Member Pricing: Ends March 31st

We're giving the first wave of Trackr users the chance to lock in $225/mo for life. Regular price goes to $275 on April 1st. Use code FRIENDS50 at checkout.

Book a demo

Try Trackr for Free

Keep building.

The Playkit Team

PS. want to see the full dashboard before you commit? here’s a quick demo:

Below we’ll share the exact formats, frameworks, and operational systems that made it work, broken down so you can apply them to your own campaigns.

Every month we publish what’s working across our campaigns so teams can steal the playbook. This month, the data pointed to one clear pattern: the videos that convert aren’t the ones designed to go viral. They’re the ones designed to start conversations.

We call it the comment-to-conversion system. Here’s how it works:

The video’s job is to get someone to comment. Not to sell, not to demo, not to push a CTA. Just to start a conversation.

The format: long-text overlays, emotionally driven stories, and an open loop that invites viewers to share their own experience or opinion. Once a viewer comments, our creators reply naturally with a product mention. It feels like a peer recommendation. And it converts.

Here’s what that looked like across our three strongest campaigns this month.

1. Parrot: Language Learning App

11.7M views · 19,000 installs · $1.48 CPI

Parrot was our highest-converting campaign in February and the clearest proof of the comment-to-conversion system at work.

The format: Almost entirely long-text storytelling. The great news: once you find the positioning that works, it’s simple to create hundreds of similar videos across creators. The hard part is finding that positioning in the first place.

The key to winning at this format is making the copy feel personal. In this case, creators shared their personal experiences learning Spanish: the weird things that happen when you start thinking in another language, embarrassing translation mistakes, the feeling of finally understanding a conversation. Naturally, these things that “no one talks about” are great comment-starters. From there, a product plug is simple.

@jess.learnspanishlike just a random thought i had while doing my lessons on parrot #LanguageLearning #spanishtiktok #parrotpartner #spanish #studyspanish

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Why it converted: In most of our videos, we included one simple trick: adding the product name, Parrot, into the text. This made the product feel undeniable. The creator spoke about it as if everyone already knows what it is. Inevitably, the viewer feels a sense of FOMO as they migrate to the comments only to see more people talking about the app. It leads them straight to the App Store.

@michelle.learningspanishMind blowing. Parrot has helped me smmmmm #studyspanish #parrotpartner #spanishtiktok #learnspanish #languagelearning

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What to steal for your campaigns: Copy should feel like you're texting a friend, so much so that you're expecting a reply in the form of a comment. When you get that "reply," respond immediately, plugging the app. Go a step further and mention the app name in the video itself. Our data shows this converts significantly better than keeping the brand hidden until the comments.

2. Innie: Self-Reflection & Journaling App

5,000+ downloads

Sometimes all it takes is just one (or in this case, two) videos.

The format: Deeply personal talking-head and long-text videos about mental health, self-reflection, and those pivotal moments that shift how someone sees themselves. Copy should invite connection and collaboration. The Internet should feel like one big group chat that you’re playing intro and contributing to: friendly, open and welcoming.

@jessselfjourneyhonestly can't go without it #selflove #selfcare #fyp #inniepartner #selfimprovement

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Why it converted: The bulk of Innie’s downloads came from just two videos. One hit 742K views. Another, a simple talking-head video, reached 150K views but drove roughly 3,000 downloads on its own. That’s roughly a 2% conversion rate. Most paid social campaigns celebrate 0.5%.

@sydney.inniethank u Innie #rejection #rejectiontherapy #talktherapy #dbt #inniepartner

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What to steal for your campaigns: Show up authentically. Most people are experiencing loneliness in some aspect and yearn to connect with others in online spaces. If you can have your creators show up with those connection opportunities, you’ll build real community that will be open to your product that might genuinely positively impact their lives.

3. RecentFollow: Instagram Follower Tracking App

803 videos · 12M views · 74,600 shares · 12.34% engagement rate

RecentFollow was our highest-volume campaign and the best example of what happens when the content topic naturally generates comments without the creator having to force engagement.

The format: Long-text storytelling around relationships, trust, and the emotional weight of discovering who your partner recently followed on Instagram. Every video was designed to provoke an opinion or a personal story. The subject matter did the heavy lifting.

@anabeatriz.girlhacksrecentfollow.com exposed his ahhh #cheatingbf #adviceforgirls #relationships #recentfollowpartner #cheatingboyfriend

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Why it converted: 74,600 shares and 93,300 saves across the month. Multiple videos cleared 1M+ views. More importantly, the daily views chart showed sustained performance with repeated spikes rather than a single peak and decline. As always, the goal with these organic channel is not to bet on one-off viral spikes, but it’s to create repeatable, sustainable high view videos.

What to steal for your campaigns: RecentFollow worked because nobody needs to be prompted to share their opinion about their partner’s social media behavior. The content was the prompt. Apply this filter to your own campaigns: would someone comment on this video even if the creator didn’t ask them to? If the answer is no, the topic isn’t strong enough.

New This Month: Cross-Posting to Instagram

In February, we started cross-posting all videos to Instagram Reels. The hypothesis was simple: we’re already producing thousands of videos per month, so distributing them to a second platform is nearly free incremental reach.

The results were more nuanced than we expected.

For most verticals, TikTok still dominated. Then there’s Perdiem, a social spending app where you can see what your friends spend their money on. Perdiem launched mid-month, with 55% of views coming from Instagram. Not TikTok.

Why? Instagram loves to rage bait. Scroll through comment sections on Instagram and you’ll see much stronger opinions and arguments. Everyone loves to prove their point on there. To excel on Instagram, create content that gets people arguing. TikTok, on the other hand, is much friendlier, it thrives with content that’s led by emotional vulnerability.

The Bigger Picture

Here’s the format shift we’re seeing across thousands of videos and millions of views.

Short, punchy, hook-driven content is losing ground to longer, story-driven formats that prioritize emotional connection over attention hacking. The creators producing the best results right now aren’t the ones with the best hooks. They’re the ones who can tell a story that makes someone want to share their own.

Running a consumer app and want to see what this system could do for your growth?

Let's talk!

Keep creating!

The Playkit Team

PS. If you’re running UGC internally and want access to the same workflows and tracking we use across Playkit campaigns, we’ve opened our system through Trackr.

Andrew walks through exactly how Arrow hit 100K users with slideshow content, why most founders focus on trends instead of building marketable products, and how Scratch AI scaled quickly using influencer-owned distribution.

We dive into the real differences between organic vs influencer growth, how to design app UI that doubles as marketing, and why “posting first, building later” can save months of wasted work.

If you’re building a consumer app, or thinking about it, this episode is a tactical breakdown of what actually works in 2026.

Timestamps

00:00 — Why you should post before you build

10:42 — Discovering TikTok slideshows

14:26 — Why faceless content is dying

22:11 — Designing UI for virality

26:01 — Validating ideas with content

27:50 — Surviving organic highs + lows

32:09 — Pros & cons of organic growth

34:29 — Scratch AI + influencer strategy

38:16 — Why obvious ads convert

43:22 — Creators building products

This webinar breaks down how we run UGC at scale (10M+ views/month), but if you want to actually build this system yourself, I’m taking it one step further.

Starting February 9, I’m hosting a free 10-day UGC Bootcamp where we’ll build a fully functioning in-house UGC program together.

What we’ll cover:

• Creator sourcing, approvals, and onboarding

• Briefing creators + approving videos

• Launching and optimizing live content

• Turning everything into a repeatable system

You’ll get:

• Live office hours with me twice a week

• Async Looms + clear homework each step

• Slack access to ask questions in real time

• Accountability from others building alongside you

The bootcamp is hosted in the Trackr Slack and open to the Trackr community.

I’m opening free access to the first 40 people so I can keep it hands-on.

👉 Join Trackr at ugctrackr.com, join Slack, and DM me once you’re in.

Join Trackr

Tech UGC became the dominant distribution model for consumer apps in 2025.

It’s cheap, relatively easy to kickstart, and a great way to test hundreds of video concepts, top-of-funnel messaging, and acquire new users at scale.

The playbook is simple: find a few creators, brief them, replicate top performing videos. Easy, right?

Here’s what no one talks about:

The operational mess that happens behind this simple funnel: hundreds of DMs, thousands of videos to track, community building, task management, approvals, timelines, the list goes on.

Luckily, we spent an entire year operationalizing our flow at Playkit and now I'm sharing exactly how we pump out 8k videos/month & 10M+ views/week with 150+ creators.

Now, I'm going over how we do this live. In this webinar, you’ll learn:
- how we structure UGC campaigns
- how we use tasks and tooling to keep output high
- leaderboards, incentives, and accountability that actually work
- how we review and iterate on hundreds of videos a day

If you’re running (or about to run) a serious UGC program and want to scale without chaos, burnout, or hiring a massive team, this session will show you exactly how we do it at Playkit.

It’s cheap, relatively easy to kickstart, and a great way to test hundreds of video concepts, top-of-funnel messaging, and acquire new users at scale.

The playbook is simple: find a few creators, brief them, replicate top performing videos. Easy, right?

Here’s what no one talks about:

The operational mess that happens behind this simple funnel: hundreds of DMs, thousands of videos to track, community building, task management, approvals, timelines, the list goes on.

When we started Playkit, we leveraged iMessage group chats, Google Sheets, VAs, and spent a lot of time manually reminding creators to post. We were in the trenches.

To scale (and to not go crazy), we built infrastructure to help us operationalize this system.

What Trackr Actually Is

Trackr is the system we’ve used internally at Playkit to manage 200+ creators, 80,000+ videos, and 900M+ views across client campaigns.

It’s not a creator marketplace.
It’s not an influencer discovery tool.
It’s infrastructure for running UGC campaigns at scale.

Here’s what happens when you use Trackr:

• Manually managing creators → Automated creator tracking

• Scattered approvals → Centralized review system

• Unclear requirements → Assigned deadlines and posting quotas

• Manual video tracking → Automated TikTok monitoring

• Spreadsheet chaos → Single source of truth for campaigns

Try Trackr

We didn’t build Trackr as a startup idea. We built it because we had to in order to run our own agency.

Now we’re making it available.

Start 7-Day Free Trial

How We Actually Use Trackr to Manage 200+ Creators

Our 2026 hypothesis is simple: more teams will bring UGC campaigns in-house.

The economics make sense. Creative control makes sense. But the operations don’t, unless you have systems.

On top of offering Trackr, we’ll also share how we use it at Playkit and how we operationalize UGC to reduce management hours (like Slack tours, pay structures, recommendations, community-building, creator strike systems, and more).

Much of this will come in the following weeks. To get started, here’s how we use Trackr day-to-day:

1. Creator Management

For each campaign, you get a high-level overview of your creators’ posting progress.

You’ll see their target posts per week and how many posts they’ve completed each day from Monday to Sunday.

2. Creator Leaderboard

We use the leaderboard to internally incentivize creator performance.

Our creators are paid based on Playkit’s flat rate + CPM bonus structure dependent on where they are in the leaderboard. This creates healthy competition and keeps quality high.

3. Video Review

One of the biggest unlocks we had at our agency was beginning the process of reviewing all content before it’s posted.

We built this feature in Trackr for seamless, quick video review from UGC Engineers.

Our recommendation: Instruct creators to batch-upload content on assigned days (e.g. Monday / Wednesday / Friday).

Then, as you review all content pieces you can mark videos as:

• Pending review

• Needs edits

• Approved / ready to post

This ensures creators only post videos that have been quality-checked by your team, reducing low-quality or off-brand posts and keeps comms streamlined without needing to go back and forth in DMs.

Why We’re Launching This Now

UGC works as a distribution channel, but most teams hit a wall at 10+ creators because the operational chaos becomes unsustainable.

If you’re running UGC at scale (or planning to) this is the system.

Try Trackr Free for 7 Days

We’ll be sharing more about how we operationalize UGC at Playkit in the coming weeks, everything from creator community-building to payment structures to quality control systems. More to come!

Until next time,

The Playkit Team

Subscribe now

We get into everything from why TikTok’s algorithm has a “short memory,” the exact strategies behind Lore’s viral TikTok and Twitter moments, why leading with the problem (not the solution) built insane trust, and how their Discord quietly became a cult-like community that now powers the product itself.

If you’re a consumer founder, marketer, or anyone thinking deeply about the future of social media, fandom, and community-led growth, this episode is a masterclass in building something people feel emotionally invested in before it even exists.

00:00 — Going Viral Before Launch

How Lore went viral on Twitter in its first week and what happens when you move fast on shared frustration.

00:11:49 — The Power of Starting With the Problem

Why Lore’s earliest content focused only on frustration, not features or product demos.

00:13:38 — “We Are You” as a Brand Strategy

How shared pain points create trust, camaraderie, and community faster than any feature launch.

00:15:00 — Why Most Founders Market Too Early

The mistake of pushing solutions before trust, and why Lore avoided it.

00:18:42 — The Waitlist Strategy (100K+ Signups)

How Lore tested fandoms, rode cultural moments, and scaled organically.

00:21:26 — 215M Views Without Hard CTAs

Why curiosity beat conversion tactics, and how to subtlety drive massive signups.

00:25:58 — UGC Over Influencers

Why Lore chose everyday fans over big creators, and why that mattered.

00:30:46 — The Discord Flywheel

Adding a Discord button to the waitlist → 14,000 members → organic fandom governance.

00:31:36 — Letting Users Build the Community

Fandom requests, voting systems, mods, and self-sustaining culture.

00:38:19 — The Future of Social Media

Lore as the antithesis to curated personas and infinite feeds, and what comes next.

2025 was also the year Playkit emerged as the operating system behind the biggest organic growth stories in consumer tech. Some of our favorite companies and names that leveraged Playkit this year included:

Substack, Flo Health, Sam Altman, Sean Parker, Matt Damon, Ben Affleck and PinkPanthress.

As of December 2025, Playkit creators have posted over 69,764 videos, driven 755M+ views, and helped generate 7M+ downloads for consumer apps across every category.

Coming out of 2025, our thesis is simple: Creator-led, UGC marketing will become the default growth engine for consumer tech, with UGC Engineers leading the charge. More on this later.

This State of UGC Report is a look at how organic marketing has evolved over this past year, our predictions on where it’ll go, and the exact steps you need to take to capitalize on this wave.

The State of B2C Marketing

The consumer marketing landscape hit an inflection point this year.

Every major channel that brands historically relied on, paid ads, influencer partnerships, and traditional brand creative, saw sharp declines in efficiency, trust, and cultural influence. Three core shifts defined 2025:

1. Paid ads became radically less efficient.

CPMs and CAC rose across every major platform, with Meta Ads showing a $20 average CPM. While simultaneously, consumers admit they instinctively skip anything marked as a paid promotion:

@playkit.xyzInfluencer marketing isn’t hitting like it used to…And that’s where UGC creators shine. We’re real, adaptable, and able to fit into any niche seamlessly. Check out the latest episode of Hooked at the link in our bio with @Mia | UGC + App Founder 📸💋 @julia | building playkit @Nick Sanchez #ugccreator #influencermarketing #influencerversusugc #ugctips #creatoreconomy

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2. As the creator economy grows, so do influencer prices.

A report from Label found that micro-influencers typically command a median CPM of $119, while nano-influencers can reach up to $211, proving out to be an unsustainable channel for acquisition.

UGC marketing though, proved to have much lower CPMs. For example, Playkit’s average CPM was $3.95 across all campaigns in 2025.

3. Consumers shifted to organic, peer-to-peer influence.

Follower counts mattered less than ever before, with algorithms serving new content to consumers, regardless if they were following the account or not. The algorithmic shift proved great for new creators, brands and products looking to find their ideal customer.

With this change, content urges to feel more organic and authentic, to truly end up on people’s FYPs. Content will now only be seen if it is truly loved.

Content, then, becomes two-dimensional. Instead of just consuming, comment sections are bubbling with rebuttals, thoughts, stories and more. Comment sections beg for true connection in our era of loneliness, leaving the opportunity open for modern day word of mouth product recommendations:

Tech UGC: The New Playbook

Because of this (paid ad fatigue, influencer prices and peer-to-peer influence), a new channel of marketing arose: tech UGC.

Different from what we’ve ever seen before, tech UGC works by:

• hiring creators to make brand new accounts and produce content designed to look and feel like it’s coming from a user of the product they’re promoting

• accounts have little to no followers which makes the recommendations feel more organic and less like an ad from an influencer

• building out creator teams and infrastructure to test messaging with hundreds of videos a week

UGC allows brands to be boots on the ground with their communities, promoting their products within their ideal ICP instead of speaking at them. It allows consumers to feel a sense of discovery and trust for the product, leading to higher conversion. Here’s what that looks like:

@schoooolncatch me as an academic weapon this semester #studytips #coconote #collegelife #studytok #university

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As brands try to build this in-house, they’ve struggled to hire the right key players to understand organic social, manage creators and consistently analyze and iterate on successful content. This is the program that we’ve perfected at Playkit and we’re excited to share our learnings with the rest of the world.

In comes our 2026 UGC Engineer program: built for anyone who wants to learn how to build out high-performing UGC campaigns.

secure your spot in the program

The Data: What 69K Videos and 750M+ Views Have Taught Us

We jumped on the UGC trend early. This year alone, we’ve worked with 50+ brands and have posted over 69,000 videos. Needless to say, we’ve learned a lot.

A lot of founders we speak to about organic marketing expect instant results. If we’ve learned anything, we know that’s not how it works.

The majority of videos you put out will be in the 0-10k view range. These videos are still important. While not necessarily driving large-scale views, they allow you to quickly validate your messaging and learn what formats have potential for your brand.

Our viral videos (500k+ views) accounted for over half of our total views while making up just 0.3% of our total videos.

The takeaway: You need volume to find winners. This isn’t a “post 10 videos and see what happens” channel, it’s a systematic testing engine that requires infrastructure.

UGC Budgets

Based on our 700+ inbound companies in 2025, these are the budgets we’re seeing allocated to creator-led marketing and UGC:

Playkit Inbound Budget Ranges

Less than $15K: 388 companies (59.4%)

$15K-$30K: 188 companies (28.8%)

$30K-$50K: 46 companies (7.0%)

$50K-$100K+: 31 companies (4.7%)

What this tells us: The UGC movement is still early, and very few companies are putting significant budget into this. Most are still testing with small budgets.

There’s a massive opportunity to get ahead by investing early. The brands committing $30K+ are seeing transformational results because they have the budget to reach the volume needed to find viral hits.

The best time to start was yesterday. The second best time is now.

Creator Pay

In 2025, Playkit creators earned over $1.17M, with top creators making more than a full-time salary through UGC alone. As UGC continues to replace traditional influencer marketing, more creators are realizing they don’t need a massive following to make real money. UGC, then, will continue to grow into one of the hottest roles in the gig economy.

2025 payouts, at a glance:

• $1,177,395 paid out to creators

• $2,000/month average creator earnings

• $10,975 highest single-month creator payout

Best Performing Niches

Based on our 69K videos and 755M+ views, here are the top-performing niches and why they work:

1. Relationship / Dating

234.8M views | 13,873 videos | 16,921 avg views

Why it works: High emotional investment, shareable factor, universal relatability and easy to engage with.

@elena.girlhacksso heartbreaking #recentfollowpartner #trustissues #relationshiphelp #ihatemybf #microcheating #forthegirls #boyfriendproblems

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2. Education / Language Learning

230.8M views | 12,027 videos | 19,191 avg views

Why it works: Built-in demonstration value, aspirational identity appeal, progress-based content.

@ana.learningspanishLIKEBYOU DID WHAT TO HIM??????? #studyspanish #LanguageLearning #language #spanish #parrotpartner

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3. AI Creative Tools

123.4M views | 9,388 videos | 13,147 avg views

Why it works: The product output is the content; low barrier to understanding what the app does.

@kayla.cantina @kayla.cantina ♬ original sound - astral - astral

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4. Shopping / Deals

27.9M views | 3,138 videos | 8,891 avg views

Why it works: Immediate tangible value, satisfying “hack” format, appeals to the universal desire to save money.

@adrianna.findsthis hack saved my wallet #furniture #furnitureshopping #apartmenttour #apartmenttherapy #dupepartner #apartmentinspo #roomdesign #interiordesigner #styleinspo #savingmoney #furnishing

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5. Gaming / Entertainment

22.9M views | 4,424 videos | 5,182 avg views

Why it works: Built-in entertainment value with a clear understanding of the app.

@hani.dailyflicksthis is sooo fun for me #dibilpartner #autumn #diml #cameraroll #aesthetic

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Campaign Performance Benchmarks*

It can feel discouraging to post 100s of pieces of content with no results. Here’s the performance benchmarks we see with our campaigns over time:

*Benchmarks are based on a 10-creator, 600 video/month campaign.

Engagement Rate: 8% or better

What “good engagement” looks like:

• Comments: Your content was (positively or negatively) compelling enough that they took time to add their thoughts to it.

• Saves: Shows their intent to remember your product and try it later.

• Shares: They liked it enough to tell their friends about it.

• The reality: Most campaigns take 2-3 months to find their stride. The brands that win are the ones that commit to the volume needed to test, learn, and iterate.

Comment Seeding: the most underrated UGC tactic

The comment section is the most underrated, and misunderstood, part of UGC marketing. People don’t just watch videos: they read the comments to decide what to think. At Playkit, we intentionally use this behavior to our advantage. When a video starts gaining traction, we share it with our creator community and activate the comment section, guiding the conversation toward the app through authentic questions, reactions, and social proof.

Here’s an example of a comment section done right, for a product called Ollie:

Even better, you’ll notice that these product-forward comments garner a massive amount of likes from real people. Comments become the modern-day word of mouth, with consumers feeling grateful to hear the suggestion.

Where is Tech UGC Headed?

In 2026, early adopters will begin expanding budgets and dedicating internal resources to scale UGC programs in a real, sustained way.

Most founders know UGC works. But when they try to run it themselves, they hit the same wall: dozens of creator conversations, briefs flying everywhere, broken spreadsheets, and no clear visibility into what’s actually driving growth.

UGC doesn’t fail because it doesn’t work. It fails because it’s never been operationalized.

That’s exactly why we created the UGC Engineer program, a role and training program designed to turn creator-led growth into a system.

As tech UGC explodes heading into 2026, the winners won’t be the brands creating the most content, they’ll be the ones who engineered the systems to do it at scale. The UGC Engineer is trained in our exact framework to:

• Build creator pipelines that actually run themselves

• Implement the tech stack that eliminates manual chaos

• Turn UGC from an overwhelming experiment into a predictable growth channel

This is the first program of its kind. We’re teaching the exact operational playbook we use at Playkit to run large-scale UGC programs and spots are extremely limited for our founding cohort.

join the waitlist

What about AI?

The fact that your product is powered by AI is no longer a compelling marketing hook. Viewers are fatigued by the word “AI” and increasingly skeptical of anything that leads with it.

What does work is communicating the core problem you solve and building community around that solution. AI is no longer the moat. It’s the infrastructure.

Do’s:

• Use AI as supporting material, mixed with clearly human-generated content

• Leverage slideshows or static images, which are less likely to trigger AI fatigue

• Lean into humor and self-awareness, especially when referencing AI indirectly

Don’t:

• Try to pass AI-generated content off as fully human

• Lead with “AI-powered” as your primary value prop

• Over-rely on AI voiceovers or visuals that feel uncanny valley

The brands winning with AI products in 2026 will be the ones that make you forget AI is even involved.

How do I start?

We’ve built our company on sharing resources as we learn more about this ever-changing organic marketing world. Check out our:

• Youtube for podcasts + webinars

• Growthkit for instructions on exactly how to start ugc marketing

• UGC Trackr for the software we use to power our agency with creator management, overseeing engagement analytics + more

• UGC Engineer waitlist for early-access to the program that will teach exactly how we operationalize large-scale UGC campaigns at Playkit

• Our intake form to run UGC campaigns with our agency, Playkit

That’s all from us!

Happy holidays from the Playkit team + see you next year!

We get into everything from how Ditto is reinventing social media and why Gen Z needs a new way to share online, to the exact playbook behind Ditto’s IRL college launches. Lillie breaks down their three-school pilot, what they learned from literally living on campus for a week, how to build a campus “cult,” and why most brands fail at college marketing.

If you’re a consumer founder, a marketer, or anyone building for Gen Z, this episode is a masterclass in IRL activations, student psychology, and modern distribution for consumer apps.

00:01:18 — Who Lillie Is & Ditto’s Mission

From scaling brands → raising money → building a more authentic social app.

00:06:20 — What Ditto Actually Is

How a breakup + a Notes app list led to a viral moment and the idea behind Ditto.

00:10:02 — Why They Chose TikTok as the First Channel

The “single-player to multi-player” insight and how TikTok unlocked Ditto’s early users.

00:11:39 — Why Campus? Why Now?

Identifying Ditto as a “best-used-in-groups” product and the strategy behind going IRL.

00:13:15 — Ditto’s Pyramid Strategy

Top: TikTok & reach

Bottom: campus evangelists & tight friend groups

How the two meet in the middle.

00:14:30 — How Ditto Designs Events That Actually Convert

The 4 pillars of campus strategy: events, ambassadors, guerilla marketing, content.

The North Star: create a cult.

00:16:15 — Why Most College Events Don’t Work

The trap of “pretty but useless” activations (free coffee, beer pong, merch) that don’t drive retention.

00:17:04 — Product Education: The Secret Ingredient

How Ditto used a giant LED screen to display live user lists and create “magic moments.”

People competing to get on the screen. Viral content moments. Actual retention.

00:19:02 — What Actually Drives Retained Users

Why small group talks and genuine connection outperform high-budget parties and stunts.

00:20:19 — How to Test Campus Events the Right Way

Pick 3 experiments. Do each one exceptionally well. Then evaluate.

00:21:53 — Becoming an Insider: The Ditto House

Why Ditto lived on campus for a week: classes, libraries, coffee shops, observing behavior, throwing house parties.

Not scalable, but priceless insights.

00:24:12 — Lessons From Going All-In

How being physically present built trust, loyalty, and brand obsession — and why other apps failed when they “tried campus.”

00:29:42 — Why Most Apps Say “We Tried Campus, It Didn’t Work”

Debunking what “trying” actually means — and why most companies quit too early.

00:31:04 — If You’re a Founder Starting an Ambassador Program…

The 3 steps:

1. Define your hypothesis

2. Pick acquisition channels

3. Run tiny but high-quality experiments

00:33:38 — The #1 KPI for Ditto: Build a Cult

How they measure brand desire, DMs, applications, referrals, merch-wearing, and UGC.

00:34:06 — What’s Changing for Semester Two

Scaling from 40 to 300+ ambassadors, shifting from hand-picked to flexible open applications.

00:36:01 — The Many Types of Ambassadors

Why guys are joining, how students spread the app through clubs, Greek life, and fantasy leagues.

00:37:38 — Building an Ambassador Engine

Referral links, flexible tasks, payouts, and turning ambassadors into community.

So this month, we shifted our approach. Instead of relying on traditional UGC tactics, we rebuilt our content strategy as a true funnel, and the results were undeniable. Here’s what changed:

1. Top-of-Funnel: Creators posted viral, lifestyle-driven content loosely connected to the product to maximize reach.

2. Mid/Bottom-Funnel: Once videos started gaining traction, creators jumped in with high-volume comment bounties and video replies, this time focused directly on the product.

This worked because viewers couldn’t immediately identify these pieces as advertisements. The comment-driven conversations and video replies felt more like authentic, peer-to-peer recommendations than paid promotions.

In November alone, Playkit produced 6,600 videos and generated 51.2 million views across campaigns. Below are the top 5 videos from the month and what made each one convert.

1. 5.9M views: photo carousel, family meal planning app

   What worked: We tapped into an existing trend to drive mass virality, generating over 15,000 comments that we could then reply to. The post’s controversial angle pulled in thousands (if not millions) of viewers who became invested in the story, giving our team the perfect setup to follow up with video replies to the most viral comments, this time directing the narrative toward the app:

   How to replicate: Start with highly viral, top-of-funnel content to attract as many viewers as possible. Use the comment section, especially viral comments, to extend the story and naturally introduce the product. Then, follow up with video comment replies that build on the original post’s narrative while tying in friendly recommendations for your product.

   The example above reached 100k views, not because the content itself was extraordinary, but because it built off the momentum of a viral moment, allowing us to spotlight the product in front of a significantly larger audience.

2. 4.9M views: photo carousel, social photo sharing app

   What worked: This photo carousel tapped into a trending TikTok topic: AI fatigue. As more people look for non-AI tools and “real” ways to share moments, this template created the perfect opening to introduce a social photo-sharing app. The post sparked a flood of comments, giving our creators multiple opportunities to plug the app even further through replies and video responses, all while keeping the conversation organic. Notice the high like count on comments specifically about the app:

   

   How to replicate: Photo carousels are exploding on TikTok right now, and the key is using the comments as an extension of the content, not just the post itself. Once the carousel gains traction, creators can be more direct about the product in their replies and video responses without breaking the organic feel.

3. 2.6M views: long text, relationship app

   What worked: Long-form, storytelling-style content performs exceptionally well on TikTok because it invites viewers into the conversation. In this video, the creator directly asked for advice, prompting a surge of comments. That opened the door to naturally reply with a direct URL, giving consumers a tool they could use immediately and making the recommendation feel organic and friendly.

   

   How to replicate: Create relatable content that viewers instinctively want to weigh in on. Ask for their advice, opinions, or perspectives. People love sharing their thoughts; they just need the invitation. Once the comments roll in, use replies to introduce the product in a way that feels conversational and helpful rather than sales-driven.

4. 2.2M views: long text, language learning app

   What worked: This video never mentions the product directly. Instead, the creator uses a 6-second storytelling hook that sparks instant curiosity. The long-text overlay pulls viewers in, and the relatable language-learning insight encourages comments and replays, creating the perfect setup for follow-up replies where the app can be introduced naturally.

   

   How to replicate: If you’re working with multiple creators, use them to strategically flood the comment section once a video gains traction. At Playkit, anytime a post crosses 50k views, we share it with 200+ creators who jump in with funny, relatable comments that naturally mention the app. This turns the comment section into a second wave of virality and gives viewers multiple entry points to discover (and download) the product.

5. 2.1M views: talking video, language learning app

   What worked: Simple talking videos continue to be some of the highest-converting formats on TikTok. This creator delivers a casual, relatable story that naturally weaves in the product without feeling scripted or promotional. The authenticity of a face-to-camera explanation makes viewers trust the recommendation, leading to higher conversions than trend-based or overly produced content.

   How to replicate: Encourage creators to speak casually, use their own tone, and explain how the product fits into their real routine, this format consistently converts because it feels like genuine advice, not an ad.

Key Takeaways:

Now more than ever, content has to feel real. Creativity wins here. The best videos build trust and community by letting viewers in through vulnerability, education, or a shared experience.

Arguably, even more important than the video itself is the comment section. If you can steer the conversation, you can steer people straight to your product. Instead of obsessing over the perfect product shot or demo, reverse-engineer the comments. Build content that sparks discussion around the problems you solve. Then, when you show up in the replies with a solution, it doesn’t feel like a sell, it feels serendipitous and conversion rates will skyrocket. Trust me.

Every month, you can look forward to a breakdown of our top videos, sharing what we’re learning and seeing on TikTok in real-time.

Share The Playkit Report

Until next time,

The Playkit Team

We get into everything from landing higher-paying gigs, to what separates top UGC creators from the rest, to the real difference between influencer vs. UGC campaigns. Mia also shares the mindset shifts that helped her build a career in content, and what inspired her to create Creator Vault - the app helping creators earn more, avoid bad brand deals, and make smarter business decisions.

If you’re a creator, strategist, brand marketer, or anyone curious about the behind-the-scenes of UGC, this one is full of tactical gems.

00:00 — Intro & What We’ll Cover

Setting up the episode, what UGC really is, and how Mia got started.

00:08:53 — Getting Ghosted by Brands & How to Protect Yourself

Mia shares her own story of being ghosted and the systems creators can use (Creator Vault, DuPay).

00:09:56 — Tactical Advice for New UGC Creators

Watermarking, submitting fewer videos first, getting partial payment up front.

00:14:00–00:20:00 — Creator Vault Deep Dive

How it works, who it’s built for, and how it helps creators avoid bad brand deals.

00:29:40 — Pricing: What to Charge for UGC

Market-rate guidance for organic UGC and ad content, usage rights pricing, and how to avoid undercharging.

00:35:00 — Influencer vs. UGC Campaigns

Where they overlap, where they differ, and what brands actually want in 2025.

00:40:00 — Building a Sustainable Creator Career

Mia’s perspective on longevity, repeat clients, and protecting your energy.

00:47:38 — Mindset: The Real Reason Creators Succeed

Mia’s philosophy on belief, daily reps, failing forward, and staying consistent.

00:49:11 — Handling Hate Comments & Staying Resilient

Why mindset matters more as you grow, and why “cringe” is part of the job.

00:52:00 — Final Advice for UGC Creators

What she wishes she knew earlier, and her #1 tip for getting started.

He’s the founder of @BestCelebrations (nearly 3 million) and @Culture (100k+), two of the internet’s most viral and community-driven social pages. In this episode, Quinn shares the exact systems, frameworks, and mindset that took him from editing Vine clips as a teenager to running multi-million-follower brands today.

You’ll learn:

→ How to grow from 0 → 10K followers

→ The “1,000 True Fans” framework that every creator should master

→ How to build teams that don’t burn out

→ Why defining your niche deeper (not wider) drives sustainable growth

This is one of the most tactical episodes yet, a must-listen for founders, creators, and marketers building long-term audience brands.

Timestamps

00:00 — Quinn’s background: from Vine editor to brand builder

07:00 — The origin of @BestCelebrations and @Culture

10:00 — How he grew his first 10K followers

12:30 — The early “shoutout-for-shoutout” growth strategy that still works

15:00 — Buying and flipping social accounts as a teen

18:00 — Why brands plateau (and how to break through it)

20:00 — Redefining your niche: what “celebration” really means

23:00 — The “1,000 True Fans” framework that changed everything

25:00 — Quinn’s 3-step strategy to grow from 0 → 10K followers

28:00 — Doing the things that don’t scale (and why it matters)

35:00 — Building high-performance social teams that don’t burn out

39:00 — Turning down $100K brand deals to protect authenticity

45:00 — How to turn followers into business opportunities

47:00 — The future of content: community over algorithms

If you asked us a year ago where we’d be today, I’m confident neither of us would have any idea we’d be here. We’ve worked with some of our favorite products: Substack, Flo Health, Dupe.com and with some of the coolest people: Sam Altman, Sean Parker, Matt Damon & Ben Affleck. We couldn’t have predicted this if we tried.

A year flies by when you’re having fun (or when you’re really busy). Here’s what we’ve accomplished since then:

• Built proprietary software (Trackr) to scale campaigns, manage creators, and track analytics across thousands of posts

• 200 top-tier creators in our network

• 660M total views and 5M+ downloads driven for brands

• $2.5M total revenue to date, on track for $4M ARR

• ~50% profit margins

• 8 full-time team members

• 4% creator acceptance rate

• 100% inbound client growth

• 100s of friends along the way <3

We’ve made a lot of mistakes (and will make a lot more) but when it comes down to it, our biggest learning has been to lead with authenticity. From the videos that go viral, to our relationships with clients and creators, we’ve found time and time again that it is never a waste of time to get on your audience’s level.

For a viral video, this might mean doing some deep target audience research. For a potential client, it’s empathizing with their needs. For our creators, it means making them feel part of the team and truly getting to know them.

Authenticity and kindness trumps all - it’s how we’ve powered our company and it’s what makes Playkit such a fun place to be.

And we’re just getting started. In our next year, our focus is on:

• Leveraging data and tech to turn virality into repeatable systems

• Helping enterprise teams leverage the power of UGC marketing

• Making our creator base the most talented and authentic on the internet

We’re not building an agency. We’re building the future of how brands grow online.

Of course, none of this would have been possible without you. To every client who took a bet on us, every creator who believed in what we’re building, and every person who’s been following along, thank you. You absolutely made our dreams come true this year. We can’t wait to see what we do next, together.

We’re just getting started. Let’s keep building.

The Playkit Team

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In this episode of Hooked, Zuhair Lakhani, founder of DoubleSpeed (backed by a16z’s Speedrun program), joins us to break down the future of AI video content, the creator economy’s next phase, and what happens when AI replaces the influencer.

Zuhair reveals how he:

• Used Midjourney + ElevenLabs to generate content that made $100K in 30 days• Built a phone farm to automate posts and boost views without ads• How he generated 100k organic views per day on TikTok• Developed a system to warm accounts, test hooks, and scale virality• Turned technical chaos into a business backed by a16zIf you’re building in the creator economy, experimenting with AI tools, or just trying to grow faster online… tune into this episode.

Timestamps

00:00 – Intro: Who is Zuhair Lakhani?

01:00 – From high school side hustles to A16Z-backed founder

04:00 – How to “warm” TikTok accounts for algorithm success

07:00 – The $100K TikTok Shop experiment (AI content only)

09:00 – How AI saved 15+ hours per video

10:00 – Scaling content with slideshows and automation

12:00 – Getting banned from TikTok Shop and pivoting to software

14:00 – How Zuhair landed a growth role at Cosmos

17:00 – Why managing real creators is harder than AI personas

19:00 – The rise of synthetic influencers

22:00 – How DoubleSpeed automates viral UGC content

26:00 – Why “AI + human touch” beats fully automated content

29:00 – Who should (and shouldn’t) use AI automation tools

33:00 – AI vs UGC: What wins long-term?

35:00 – Why “faceless creators” will dominate the next wave

40:00 – Zuhair’s advice for aspiring creators and founders

47:00 – How a restaurant waitlist taught him viral psychology

49:00 – Closing thoughts + how to follow Zuhair