Cloudinary Blog

New Global Study Strengthens Case for Brands to Support User-Generated Content

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Global Study Strengthens Case for Brands to Support UGC

In our increasingly networked world, the content users generate on companies’ websites—from reviews to pictures to home videos—are skyrocketing in both popularity and influence. Such content frequently and indirectly promotes products and services for the brands concerned, lending more credibility than conventional advertisements.

However, along with the benefits of user-generated content (UGC), comes myriad technical challenges. Content must be moderated to avoid compromising your brand. You need to provide a user-friendly process to efficiently manage content uploads. You need to transform images and videos to ensure brand consistency and web performance. You also need to ensure they look presentable across all devices and browser environments. To help brands address these issues and more, we recently ran a three-part blog series on UGC.

To give our community even more context to the UGC conversation, today, we are publishing the results of our Global 2020 Cloudinary UGC Study, with findings revealing that:

  • UGC is on the rise: 58 percent of respondents are generating more content, including video and written reviews, compared to last year
  • Younger generations communicate visually: one third of users have started sharing photos with their reviews; 70 percent of Gen Z and 78 percent of Millennials find photos and videos especially helpful in making purchasing decisions
  • UGC doesn’t just affect e-commerce: people are turning to user-submitted photos and videos to see how restaurants, shops and health care centers are set up, especially in the time of COVID-19

Cloudinary is here to help you overcome the technical issues so your brand can gain maximum value from the UGC revolution. Check out all of our resources below or contact us for more information.

  • UGC Infographic: See the survey infographic
  • UGC Webinar: Register to join Cloudinary and Power Reviews for the Adweek webinar, “Drive Engagement With User-Generated Content” on December 15 at 1:00 p.m. ET
  • E-commerce Guide: Learn how retailers can benefit from UGC and get the Cloudinary e-commerce guide
  • UGC Whitepaper: Take a deeper look and explore the power of UGC and the tech needed to support it.

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