UGC creator programs of 73 brands, October 2026

The short answer

As of 28 October 2026, UGC Agent has measured the creator programs of 73 brands (21 apps and 52 consumer brands), 3,569 creator accounts in all. Where every account was read (23 programs), 66% of creators have under 10,000 followers and the typical program's median creator has 4,038. App programs run on far smaller accounts than consumer brands. 70 of 73 programs use a program hashtag, yet only 16% of fully scanned brand videos are marked as ads.

Programs measured

7323 full scans, 50 samples

Creator accounts

3,56979% on TikTok

Under 10K followers

66%full scans

Use a program hashtag

70 of 73brand + partner most often

Videos marked as ads

16%full scans, 30 days

• Most program creators are small, when you count all of them. In the 23 full scans, 38% of creators have under 1,000 followers and 66% have under 10,000.
• Apps and consumer brands hire differently. Fully scanned app programs have a typical median creator of 178 followers; consumer brands, 6,734.
• The program hashtag is the norm. 70 of 73 programs have one, and 68 use the brand + partner pattern.
• Disclosure splits the field. 46% of consumer brand videos are marked as ads in fully scanned programs, against 4% for apps.

Two ways we measured, and why it matters

The dataset holds two kinds of measurement. In a full scan (23 programs) we searched TikTok, and Instagram for 11 of them, for every sign of the program, then read up to 40 recent videos from each of 2,416 candidate accounts: 69,811 videos in all. That gives a near-complete roster, complete 30-day views and a real disclosure rate.

A sample (50 programs) reads a typical 33 TikTok videos and 10 Instagram posts per brand, found by searching for paid markers such as a program hashtag, #ad or a paid-partnership label. A sample usually sees one post per creator. Its roster is a floor, its views are lower bounds, Instagram hides view counts from logged-out pages, and it cannot measure posting cadence, hit rates or disclosure rates.

The two methods see very different creators. 42% of sampled creators have 100,000 followers or more, against 17% in full scans, a gap of 26 points. That is mostly the method, not the market: search results surface big accounts first, while a full scan also finds the small accounts that never rank. So this report quotes creator size per method and never pools the two.

How big UGC program creators are

Counting every account a full scan found, the typical UGC program creator is small. Of the 1,893 creators with a known follower count, 718 have under 1,000 followers and 532 more have 1,000 to 10,000. Only 17% have over 100,000. For a brand that hires creators to make ads, follower count is not the product: the video is, and the brand's own ad account or channel carries it.

Samples lean the other way: 42% of the 1,662 sampled creators with a known count are over 100,000 and the typical program's median creator has 37K. Read that as the visible top of each roster. A sampled brand very likely also pays many small creators that search did not reach.

Apps hire tiny accounts, consumer brands hire a mix

The clearest split in the full scans is between app programs and consumer brands. The 9 fully scanned apps (Cantina, Cal AI, StudyFetch, Wispr Flow, Anara, Turbo AI, Rise Science, Locket and Jenni AI) have a typical median creator of 178 followers, and 67% of their creators are under 1,000. 44% of app program accounts are dedicated: they have posted for the app on every video since their first brand post.

The 14 fully scanned consumer brands look more like classic creator programs. Their typical median creator has 6,734 followers, 23% of creators are over 100,000, and only 7% of accounts are dedicated: most are personal accounts that mix brand videos into their usual content.

The two groups are different businesses. An app pays for installs, and a faceless or new account that posts a demo every day can drive them; the app UGC programs page compares those programs side by side. A consumer brand pays for trust and reach, so it hires people whose audience already knows them; how consumer brands run UGC covers that model.

UGC programs by category

Every program sits in one of 5 categories. Each category has its own page with the full list of brands, their creator size and their hashtags.

Among consumer categories with full scans, food and beverage hires the smallest creators: 64% of creators in its 5 fully scanned programs are under 10,000 followers. Categories with one or two full scans rest on few programs, so treat their full-scan medians as examples rather than a category norm. Sampled medians run higher everywhere for the reason above. Browse by category: beauty and personal care, supplements and wellness, food and beverage, fashion, footwear and home and consumer apps.

Program hashtags: almost universal, unevenly used

70 of the 73 programs have a hashtag their creators put on paid posts. The most common pattern is brand + partner (68 programs), then brand + ambassador (25 programs). 35 programs run two or more tags, often one per track such as an ambassador tier or a campus program. The 3 without one (Cal AI, StudyFetch and Turbo AI) are attributed from other evidence instead, such as account naming, bio statements or ad disclosures.

Having a tag is not the same as creators using it. In the 20 fully scanned programs with a tag, 13 saw it on at least 90% of counted accounts, but pooled across those programs 77% of accounts used it at least once and only 50% of their brand videos in the last 30 days carry it. At Wispr Flow, just 12% of counted accounts used the tag. A program hashtag is also among the strongest attribution evidence, so creators who never use it are harder to find and these shares overstate real adoption. The UGC program hashtags page lists every tag by brand.

How often UGC program videos are marked as ads

We count a brand video as marked when its caption carries #ad, #sponsored or "paid partnership", or the platform shows its ad or paid-partnership label. In the 23 full scans, 16% of brand videos from the last 30 days are marked; the median program sits at 28%. 9 programs mark half or more, led by Liquid Death (98%), e.l.f. Cosmetics (92%) and Native (80%). 7 mark under 5%, and Turbo AI, Locket and Jenni AI mark none.

The split follows the business model: 46% of consumer brand videos are marked against 4% for apps (program medians 54% and 2%). Where an account exists only to post for the app, the program may treat the account itself as the disclosure; 7 app programs mark under 5%. A program hashtag is not a disclosure either: of 5,455 tracked posts carrying one, only 25% also carry #ad, #sponsored or a platform label.

Sampled programs are left out of this section on purpose. Their posts were found by searching for paid markers, so their marker shares are high by construction and say nothing about how often the whole program discloses. The paid markers each sampled brand page shows read as which signals creators use, not as a rate.

Where the views go in fully scanned programs

In the last 30 days, the 23 fully scanned programs posted 8,273 brand videos from 1,286 active accounts, for 162.6M views. The top three, Cantina (25.8M), Dr. Squatch (22.6M) and Cal AI (21.5M), took 43% of them. 2 of the top five are apps, carried by volume rather than reach.

The typical video is modest. The median program's median video has 809 views, and 9% of brand videos passed 10,000 views (230 passed 100,000). Program views are a hit-driven distribution: a few videos carry each program.

Sampled programs are not ranked by views. Their TikTok views are lower bounds from a few dozen videos, and Instagram view counts are not public, so a sampled brand's views say little about its program's size. Each sampled brand page quotes its views as "from a sample of N videos".

Language and location

The programs are an English-language, US-first market. 97% of the 2,852 creators with a detected language post in English, and 79% of the 1,518 creators with a known location are in the United States. Location comes mainly from TikTok post locations and bios, so it covers only part of each roster. For creators by market, see the UGC creator directory.

How long the programs have run

For each program we date the earliest attributed post we found. 23 of the 73 programs have attributed posts from before 2024, and 22 have none found before 2026. The earliest evidence belongs to Ritual (1 March 2020), TRUFF (27 September 2020), Locket (6 February 2022), Cymbiotika (3 June 2022) and AG1 (22 July 2022). These dates are a floor on a program's age, not its launch date: full scans read recent videos only, and samples see one or two posts per creator.

What this means if you run a UGC program

• Budget for many small creators, not a few big ones. Programs that read as large from the outside are, counted in full, mostly accounts under 10,000 followers.
• Pick the model that fits the business. Apps that pay for installs run dedicated, high-volume accounts; consumer brands that pay for trust hire people with their own audience.
• Give the program a hashtag and put it in the brief. Brand + partner is the convention creators already know, and it makes your program measurable.
• Ask for the ad label as well. A program hashtag does not tell viewers a post is paid; #ad or the platform's paid-partnership label does.
• Judge a program by its spread, not its best video. The median program's median video has 809 views.

Method and limits

Every program comes from the UGC Brands database inside UGC Agent and follows one attribution rule: an account counts only on public program evidence (a program hashtag, a disclosed paid post, a bio statement, program account naming, a reused caption or a promo code), never on the brand name alone. Confirmed and likely accounts are counted; 834 possible accounts are listed in the app but left out of every number here. Brands were measured from 5 October 2026 to 28 October 2026.

• Full scans read up to 40 recent videos per candidate account and give complete 30-day views. Instagram was scanned for 11 of the 23.
• Samples read about 33 TikTok videos and 10 Instagram posts per brand, found by searching for paid markers. Rosters are a floor, TikTok views are lower bounds, Instagram views are not public, and there is no hit rate, cadence or pay data.
• Search surfaces bigger accounts first, so sampled rosters over-represent established creators. Creator size is quoted per method for that reason.
• A brand gets its own page at 15 counted accounts for a full scan and 20 for a sample. 9 measured programs fall below that and are pooled here without a page: Glossier, Speak, Ladder, GHOST, Hallow, Brainly, Monarch Money, Tarte and LMNT.
• Accounts are counted per program. A creator who posts for two brands counts in both.
• Follower counts are public counts on the measured date. Instagram profiles we could not read (14 accounts) are left out of follower figures, never counted as zero.
• The 73 brands are the ones in the UGC Brands dataset, chosen because they run visible creator programs. They are not a random sample of every brand using UGC.
• Aggregates only: this page and its CSV carry no creator handle, caption or video link.

The September 2026 edition ranked the first 11 fully scanned programs by output and views; this edition widens the dataset and changes the questions, so the two are not a month-on-month comparison.

Questions about this report

Cite and reuse this data

Cite this report: UGC Agent, "UGC creator programs of 73 brands, October 2026" (measured 5 October 2026 to 28 October 2026), UGC Agent research, published 29 October 2026, https://ugcagent.app/research/ugc-creator-programs-october-2026/

Download the per-brand aggregates as a CSV file (64 rows, one per published brand; views, median views and the ad-marked share are filled for full scans only). Charts on this page are plain HTML. Every brand also has its own page in the UGC Brands hub, and all reports are listed on the research hub.