User generated content (UGC) has become a measurable part of how people discover brands, evaluate products, and participate in online communities. The statistics below show how customer photos, videos, reviews, social posts, and creator activity connect collaboration with purchasing behavior.
Table of contents
- Consumer trust and purchase influence
- Generational differences in UGC behavior
- Shopping, fashion, and travel decisions
- Video, discovery, and the online experience
- The visual content infrastructure
- Communities and creator monetization
Consumer trust and purchase influence
UGC is closely associated with trust because it shows products through the experiences of customers and peers. In Stackla’s report, 79% of people said UGC highly impacts their purchasing decisions. The same report found that UGC was 8.7 times more impactful than influencer content when influencing purchasing decisions.
The preference is also visible in online retail. Stackla reported that 80% of global consumers would be more likely to buy from an online store if its website featured photos and videos from real customers. Meanwhile, 72% of people said UGC is the content they most want to see on eCommerce sites when making purchasing decisions.
The absence of customer-created evidence can have the opposite effect. In Stackla’s report, 58% of consumers said they had left an eCommerce store without purchasing because the website did not include customer reviews or photos. This figure was 64% among Gen Z consumers and 60% among Millennials.
Social proof can also introduce shoppers to unfamiliar brands. Stackla found that 66% of consumers had been inspired to purchase from a new brand after seeing social media images from other consumers. The figure rose to 73% for Gen Z and was 67% for Millennials.
The brand-discovery effect appears in broader buying behavior. Stackla reported that 59% of consumers had purchased from new brands since the start of the pandemic, and 75% of those consumers said they were likely to continue buying from those brands in the future. Among Gen Z consumers, 63% said they had purchased from a new brand since the pandemic started.
Generational differences in UGC behavior
The available figures show consistently strong UGC responses among Gen Z consumers, with Millennials also recording high levels in several comparable situations.
| Measure | Consumers overall | Gen Z | Millennials |
|---|---|---|---|
| More likely to buy from a store featuring UGC images and videos | 80% global | 86% | 81% |
| Likely to purchase from click-to-buy imagery | 71% | 74% | 73% |
| Left an eCommerce store because it lacked reviews or photos | 58% | 64% | 60% |
| Inspired to buy from a new brand after consumer images | 66% | 73% | 67% |
(Source: Stackla report.)
The difference is also visible in social-media usage. Stackla reported that 72% of consumers said the time they spend on social media had increased since the start of the global pandemic. The percentage was 79% among Gen Z consumers, including 46% who said their social-media time had increased a lot.
When the purchase path begins with an inspirational image, 71% of consumers said they would be likely to purchase if a store made it easy to click to buy. The rate was 74% among Gen Z and 73% among Millennials. These figures describe purchase likelihood, not completed transactions, but they indicate how social discovery and commerce can be connected in the same experience.
Customer-created visuals are particularly important for younger shoppers. Stackla found that 86% of Gen Z consumers would be more likely to buy from an online store featuring UGC images and videos, compared with 81% of Millennials and 80% of global consumers overall.
Shopping, fashion, and travel decisions
UGC affects categories where appearance, context, and personal experience help shoppers imagine ownership. Fashion is one of the clearest examples: Stackla reported that 54% of consumers said UGC is the most influential content when making fashion purchasing decisions.
The same report found that 58% of consumers had purchased apparel or accessories based on an image or video posted on social media by a friend, family member, or peer. Among Gen Z consumers, 66% said they had purchased apparel after seeing a consumer-created image or video.
Travel decisions show a similar pattern. Stackla reported that 52% of consumers had made travel plans based on an image or video posted by a friend, family member, or peer on social media. Among Gen Z consumers, 54% had booked travel after seeing UGC.
People are also willing to let brands reuse relevant experiences. Stackla found that 52% of people would grant a brand permission to use an image or video of a recent trip or excursion they had posted on social media. Permission is not the same as universal licensing or guaranteed reuse, but it indicates a measurable openness to collaborative brand content.
For marketers, the supply of suitable material remains a challenge. In Stackla’s report, 50% of surveyed marketers said producing or sourcing enough engaging visuals was one of their top content challenges. This creates a tension between demand for authentic customer material and the work required to find, obtain permission for, organize, and publish it.
Video, discovery, and the online experience
Video is a major route through which people encounter products and evaluate brands. Bazaarvoice’s 2024 Shopper Preference Report found that 60% of U.S. consumers had made a purchase after watching a video on social media or from an influencer highlighting a product. Across consumers, 64% said they tend to purchase products if they see them advertised in videos.
Product discovery also varies by geography in the reported measures. Bazaarvoice found that 66% of U.S. consumers preferred discovering new products through videos on social channels, compared with 64% of global consumers. In the same report, 61% of U.S. consumers preferred to see products on YouTube, 52% preferred Instagram, and 54% preferred TikTok.
Watching is common even when a purchase does not follow immediately. Bazaarvoice reported that 91% of U.S. consumers enjoy watching product-focused videos on social media, while 90% of global consumers said the same.
A seamless journey matters across formats and locations. Bazaarvoice reported that 82% of global and U.S. consumers emphasized the importance of a seamless shopping experience across online, in-store, and mobile channels. Cloudinary’s State of Visual Media Report found that 57% of shopping from research to purchase was happening online.
Cloudinary also reported that 52% of Gen Z consumers expected interactive experiences such as user-generated videos showing products in action. A further 16% expected 3D images that provide a realistic view of the product. These are expectation measures, not transaction rates, and they point to different ways visual content can support product understanding.
Trust remains part of the shopping equation. In Bazaarvoice’s 2024 Shopper Preference Report, 89% of U.S. consumers said a brand’s reputation for reliability and trustworthiness impacts their loyalty at least somewhat. The global figure was 87%. When comparing quality with price as the primary factor influencing brand loyalty, 53% of U.S. consumers selected quality and 37% selected price.
The visual content infrastructure
UGC depends on systems that can store, deliver, and display large volumes of images and video. Cloudinary’s 2021 State of Visual Media Report said that one large retail customer saw visual content bandwidth increase by 129% from 2019 to 2020.
In March 2021, Cloudinary managed and delivered an average of 2.4 million image and video assets per customer. Cloudinary also said it had more than 50 billion assets under management and 8,000 customers worldwide at that time.
File formats and performance changed during the same measurement period. Cloudinary reported that the average WebP file size was roughly 20% smaller than the average JPEG file size. JPEG 2000 usage rose from 4.5% in October 2019 to 25% in March 2021, while JPEG XR usage fell from 33% to 6%. HEIC usage rose from 0.2% in October 2019 to 2.1%.
Performance was an additional constraint. More than 47% of desktop websites and 57% of mobile websites needed improvement in Largest Contentful Paint to meet Google’s criteria, according to Cloudinary’s 2021 report. These figures are historical measurements from that report and should not be read as current web-performance benchmarks.
Communities and creator monetization
Community platforms provide another view of UGC: people do not only respond to content, they also create, discuss, and organize around it. Reddit reported 101.7 million daily active uniques in Q4 2024, with daily active uniques increasing 39% year over year. Reddit also said it had more than 100,000 active communities.
The platform reported Q4 2024 revenue of $427.7 million. Its full-year revenue reached $1.3 billion in 2024, representing 62% year-over-year growth. These are company-reported business figures alongside audience and community measures, so they describe platform scale and financial performance rather than the number of UGC posts.
Creator monetization on Facebook shows the economic side of participation. In a Meta Facebook Content Monetization announcement, Meta said more than 4 million content creators had earned money on Facebook since monetization launched in 2017. Meta also said Facebook paid content creators more than $2 billion in the past year for videos, reels, photo posts, and text posts.
The mix of formats is changing. Meta reported that payouts for reels and short videos on Facebook grew more than 80% in the past year. At the same time, only about one third of monetizing creators on Facebook earned from more than one Facebook-funded program.
Together, these figures show a broad UGC ecosystem. Customer photos and videos influence buying decisions; peer posts shape fashion and travel choices; communities create recurring participation; and platform programs distribute money to creators. The measurements come from different reports, dates, geographies, and definitions, so they should be compared within their stated context rather than treated as one unified survey.