Glossary
Content created by customers or creators, not the brand, that the brand can use in marketing, either organically or through a paid rights deal with the creator.
UGC (User-Generated Content) is content created by customers or creators rather than by the brand. It ranges from organic content the brand did not pay for (a customer filming themselves using a product) to paid brand deals where the brand licenses the content for marketing use.
UGC performs differently from brand-produced creative because it reads as authentic to the audience. A paid ad that looks like a customer's content outperforms a polished brand ad on most platforms, because the audience trusts the customer perspective more than the brand's. The trade-off is rights: a brand cannot just grab a creator's content and run it as an ad. Usage rights have to be negotiated and written into a contract, or the brand exposes itself to takedown requests and legal risk. The brands that win treat UGC as a rights-managed asset, not a free content library. See the authentic partnerships article on aligning terms.
Every brand deal on Infmap specifies usage rights in the contract: how long the brand can use the content, where, and for what. A brand that wants to clip a creator's integration into paid social negotiates that right at deal creation and pays for it, rather than assuming it was included. The contract is stored against the deal, so when the usage window expires, the brand knows and the rights revert per the contract. See the pricing page for how usage rights factor into deal value.
A creator posts a 90-second segment about a coffee brand inside their normal video. The brand wants to run it as a Meta ad. On Infmap, the deal contract specifies a 6-month usage window for paid social, and the creator is paid a higher fee for the usage rights. At month 7, the rights revert. The brand either renews or stops running the ad. The UGC was a rights-managed asset, not a free clip, and the relationship survives because the terms were clear.