Hiring UGC creators as ad producers for Meta, with Mal Chia

On Meta, creative now does much of the targeting, so media buyers need a steady supply of it. Host Todd Crawford talks with Mal Chia about hiring UGC creators for content, not reach; Chia compares them to the "character actors" in a film (3:06).

In this episode

• Chia says that over the last 12 or so months Meta moved away from interest, lookalike and custom-audience targeting, which now "inhibit your performance", so you let the creative do the targeting (4:42).

• For a brand spending seven figures or low eight figures, he says the minimum is testing 12 to 15 creatives each week or month (5:10).

• Meta's own testing, he says, shows low-fi UGC ads lift results about 20% over polished ads, and his team often sees 80% gains in click-through rate and return on ad spend (5:59, 6:15).

• A base price is around $300 to $400 for a 30-second to one-minute video; with no usage rights attached, the brand can recut it to test hooks and lengths (12:48, 13:17).

• For testing he suggests a daily budget of seven times your CPA, so $700 a day if CPA is $100 (14:18), and calls holdout tests the gold standard for measurement (18:39).

• He warns that relying on one creator as the face of a brand gives them leverage; in 2019 one influencer became so associated with a brand that people asked if she owned it (27:09, 28:20).

Episode from The Partnership Economy Podcast by impact.com, published on YouTube.