founder @ninja_reach // make anything go viral
Joined January 2018
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hi, i’m andrei, founder of @ninja_reach
2011: left professional football at 21 because of injuries with no plan B
2012: a former teammate got me a job selling used pipes, and 6 months in i knew a 9-5 wasn't for me
2013: my girlfriend was working at a video studio and pulled me in to organize shoots and sell projects, and for the first time i actually loved what i was selling
2014: we opened our own little studio on a borrowed computer, and we made ads for local businesses in our city
2015: i launched shema and it grew to $500K a month in sales
2019: we applied to y combinator and got invited to interview, which felt massive at the time
2020: shema got valued at $3M, we went out to raise money, but we were too ambitious and too picky about investors, and nothing closed
2021: by the end of it, we were four people in an office with one month of runway left
but trying to sell shema had taught us how to make content that gets people to buy, so when someone in our network asked us to help with their meta ads content in january, we said yes, and that’s how UGC Ninja started
2022: in february we signed our first real client, a $3k contract, with 6 people on the team, zero creators in our network and a 4 week deadline
end of 2022: by december we had 150 clients, 30k creators worldwide, 12 people on the team and an average contract of $10K+
2023: became an official creative partner for TikTok
2024: became an official creative partner for Google
2025: made 14,455 videos for 562 brands, our ads did 5B+ impressions, and we spent 10 months building our first organic campaigns, content that grows brands without paying for ads
2026: bought virality, a clipping company, for $1M, and grew to 500K+ creators and 1,500+ clients across gaming, apps, dating, lifestyle and more, with an average deal of $40K+
today: 500K+ creators, 1,500+ partners and 80B+ organic views
shema didn’t work out, but the skill we built trying to sell it turned us into one of the best UGC agencies out there
so if you’re running an app, software, a game or an ecom brand and want millions of people seeing it, shoot me a DM
Meta changed a lot of things in ad accounts in the last few weeks, and a few of them are switched on by default
if you’re about to spend big on Black Friday, these are worth checking first:
on October 28 Meta turned on a feature called product browsing in existing ads, which lets people scroll through your products right inside the ad
Meta says it got advertisers about 3% more conversions on average in their test, so it’s probably worth keeping on, but you should know it’s there
on October 19 they added an option to pick an audience for each ad creative, and it’s on by default in Sales campaigns
it can be useful, but it also means Meta might be showing different ads to different people in ways you didn’t set up
on October 27 Ads Manager started showing results for each image and video separately, which is actually really helpful, because now you can see exactly which creative in an ad is doing the work
and Meta’s AI creative tools like background generation, touch-ups and auto translations can now be turned off for each ad, which matters because brands have been finding out Meta’s AI changed their ads without them knowing
the reason all of this matters is that ads are already expensive
US Facebook CPMs were $21.45 in October, about 35% higher than last year, and they’ve been above last year’s Black Friday prices every month since July
so if something in your account is quietly changing your ads or your audiences, Black Friday week is the worst time to find out
spend 20 minutes this week going through your ad sets, check what’s switched on, and use the new creative breakdown to see which ads are actually bringing in sales before you put more money behind them
before you pay anyone for UGC views, work out what a view is actually worth to you
because you can keep paying creators for months without knowing if the videos are even making you any profit
here are the 4 numbers you should calculate
first, your click rate, how many people who watch the video actually end up on your site, let’s say 0.5%
then your conversion rate, how many of those visitors buy something, let’s say 2.5%
then your first order value, let’s say $45
and last, how much of that you keep after product and shipping, let’s say 60%
now say a creator’s videos get you 1 million views
0.5% of those people click, so 5,000 people land on your site
2.5% of them buy, so that’s 125 orders
at $45 each that’s $5,625 in sales, and after product and shipping you keep $3,375
so with these numbers, the most you can pay is $3.38 per 1,000 views if you want to break even on the first order
pay $1 per 1,000 and you keep about $2,375 on every million views
now here’s where it gets interesting with UGC
most creators charge per video, not per view, so you have to turn their price into a cost per 1,000 views yourself
say a creator charges $200 for a video
if it gets 50K views, you paid $4 per 1,000, which is over your limit, so you lost money on that video
if it gets 200K views, you paid $1 per 1,000, and that same video made you money
You're paying the same creator the same price but getting a completely different result
that’s why you should judge creators on what you pay per 1,000 views and how many clicks they send, not on how good the video looks
and watch how fast your limit moves
if only 0.2% of viewers click instead of 0.5%, it drops to $1.35
if 30% of the views are bots, it drops another 30%, because bots don’t buy anything
it moves the other way too, if your customers come back and order again, every view is worth more and you can afford to pay more for each one
so track clicks for every creator, check the views are coming from real people, and rerun this every month with your own numbers
we took a DTC brand from $900K a month in ad spend to $6.7M a month in 12 months
in that time we got them over 1 million new customers, which was about 2,700 new people buying from them every day
some days we were spending over $750K
and at that level the biggest bottleneck for scaling was how many ads we were putting out
the people who see your ad but don’t buy will see it a few times, get bored of it, and never buy from that ad
if someone’s seen the same ad around 4 times and still hasn’t bought, they probably won’t
they need new ads, MOFU and BOFU ones that answer whatever question is stopping them from buying
if you don’t have those ready, your cost per customer is gonna climb really fast
those people who got ad fatigue from that ad convert, so Meta keeps spending to find new people
then those new people need to see your ads even more times before they buy
that’s why spend keeps going up when you don’t have a consistent machine pumping out top, middle and bottom of funnel ads everyday
when an account can’t scale, it’s almost always this
- not enough angles being tested
- no middle and bottom of funnel ads to close people
- and no system for putting out new ads consistently
most of the work in scaling a DTC ad account is just making sure there’s always a next ad
at minimum you should be testing 5 new ads every single day, we were doing almost 20 to 25 for this brand
If you're starting off with 5, just make TOFU ads with new angles every day for the first week
then from the second week, make 2 TOFU, 2 MOFU, and 1 BOFU ad each day
roughly 50% of your ads should be TOFU, 30% MOFU and 20% BOFU
once that’s running smoothly, try to get it up to 15 a day with the same split
if you want to check your own account, look at two things:
- how old your best ad is
- and how many new ads you launched this week
if your best ad is over a month old and you’re launching a few ads a week instead of a few a day
your account doesn’t have enough new ads to keep growing, and your costs will keep creeping up
most teams can’t put out 20 new ads a day on their own, which is the exact problem we solve for brands
in 2 weeks we set up the whole system for your brand from the research to the creatives and the production
to make sure new ads are going live every single day
then our media buyers, who’ve managed 9 figures in ad spend, run the campaigns
track every ad, what each customer costs, which hooks are working, what to scale and what to turn off
and whatever works feeds straight into the next batch of ads, so the account keeps getting better instead of burning out
we have over 20k active UGC creators making content for our DTC brands every single day
and we also have an in-house team of 20 people that are pumping out enormous amount of AI creatives every day
and we charge just 10% of the ad spend we manage, so the only way we make more is if your ads are working well enough to spend more
If you want to scale your DTC brand with us, book a call with us ↓↓
Andrei Shemet retweeted
how did a video of a scared ball of dough get 90M views?
the format is one ecom brands should be copying for their ads
it starts with a pile of dry flour on a wooden counter
then water jumps in, more ingredients follow, and the pile slowly turns into a dough ball with a worried little face
a tiny oil character skates around a hot pan, the dough gets fried, and the last shot is a finished hotteok
here’s why it works:
-> every step of the recipe is a character, so the process is the story and nobody has to explain anything
-> it ends on the real finished product, so the payoff is guaranteed
-> there’s no host, no voiceover and nobody on camera, the same warm kitchen look runs through every scene
the hook stops the scroll, the story holds attention, and the product shows up at the moment people want to see the result
how to use this for your brand:
-> turn your key ingredient, or the problem your product fixes, into a character
-> show the full cycle from raw to finished in one video
-> keep one visual style across all scenes
-> test it organically first, then put the winners behind ad spend
we build ai content systems like this for ecom brands
DM me "UGC" and i’ll show you how to build one for your brand
Andrei Shemet retweeted
there’s a turmeric ad that doesn’t mention turmeric until 1:38
it’s from BioRoot Labs, and their name doesn’t show up until 2:12
it’s 4 minutes and 17 seconds long, it’s been the #1 ad out of 1.3K in its category for weeks, and it’s reached 2.4M people in the UK in 27 days
and it looks nothing like a supplement ad
it starts on a building site, where Bill is working up on the scaffolding and his knees start giving out
next he’s at the doctor, finding out it’s bone on bone and he’ll need a new knee in 12 to 18 months
for a builder that’s his whole job on the line, so you’re already invested before you even know what the ad is for
when turmeric finally comes up, Bill’s saying he already tried it and it didn’t do a bloody thing
a lot of people watching have tried turmeric too and felt nothing, so now he’s saying exactly what they think
then his coworker tells him why, the turmeric you get at the shop barely gets absorbed, so it never actually makes it to your joints
that’s the turn in the ad, because now the viewer has a reason to try turmeric again
and right then BioRoot comes in as the clinically dosed one with no fillers
the caption under the video opens the same way, saying you’ve heard turmeric helps with inflammation but you’ve probably never felt it do anything
they don’t need clever targeting either, it’s shown to everyone in the UK aged 18 to 65, and the story filters the audience by itself
if you’ve got bad knees you stay for the whole 4 minutes, and if you don’t you scroll past
their page says they’ve sold over 200,000
this is the kind of ad we make at UGC Ninja, start with a person and their problem, and let the product show up as the answer
a supplement brand came to us at launch, spending only $262 a day on ads
they had one question, could a single format carry the whole account if we pushed it hard enough
so we went 100% video and no statics and carousels, literally nothing to fall back on
the plan was to make a lot of videos, let the numbers pick which ones deserve money, and only raise the budget when the ads proved themselves
we made 200+ videos in about 6 weeks, and every one was built around a new angle
we didn’t re-cut the winners, because new angles reach new people, while a re-cut mostly shows the same people the same ad again
every video had to pass a spend threshold before it got more money
→ 97 made it past $1K
→ 25 made it past $10K
→ 4 made it past $50K
those 4 spent $75.4K, $65.0K, $60.8K and $50.1K
the best one alone reached 1.32M people and got over 595K plays
each time a video passed the threshold, that was proof it could handle more money, so the daily budget went up with it
that’s how $262 a day turned into $20K a day by day 21
and this is usually where accounts fall apart
you find a winner, put all the money behind it, stop testing, and the whole thing crashes when that ad gets burned out
we kept testing the whole way through, even at peak spend 42% of the ads running were still brand new tests
so when one winner slowed down, the next one was already coming up behind it
43 days in, the account was still holding at $20–22K a day, 83x where it started
if you’re scaling, try to keep at least a third of your live ads as new tests
that way when your best ad slows down, you already know which one replaces it
If you want us to do the same for your brand, let's talk ugc.ninja/andrew
we’ve paid a lot of creators over the years, and the biggest money drain isn’t bad content, it’s fake views
a creator sends you a screenshot of 2 million views, you pay them, and then nothing happens, you get no clicks, sales, or followers
because half of it was bots, or it came from countries you don’t even sell in
here’s what we check before paying anyone
→ ask for a screen recording of their analytics, not a screenshot, it’s a lot harder to fake a recording where they’re scrolling through the app live
→ look at where the audience is, if you sell in the US and 70% of their viewers are somewhere else, those views are worth almost nothing to you
→ check likes and comments against views, a video with a million views and 300 likes is weird, and comments that just say nice or wow over and over usually aren’t real people
→ watch for random spikes, an account that normally gets 5K views suddenly doing 800K on your post is worth a closer look
and then the boring part that saves you the most
start every new creator with a small paid test, check the real stats, and only then scale up
keep upfront payments small until someone’s proven they’re legit, because some people take the money and disappear
it works the other way too, there are brands that get the content and never pay the creators, which is why the good creators get careful about who they work with
before we plan any content for a brand, the first thing we ask is do you want views, installs or purchases
because the content looks completely different for each one, and so does how you judge it
if it’s views, we’re doing logo campaigns, your logo sitting on memes and viral videos
like celebrity news, streamer clips, cat videos etc + clipping long videos into a ton of short ones
that can do billions of views, it’s basically how Stake got their name everywhere
but people are watching for the meme, not your product, so don’t expect sales from it
what you’re paying for is getting your name in front of a huge number of people for cheap
if it’s installs we do slideshows and faceless edits, screen recordings of the app doing its thing
a hook up top and the app as the answer
fewer views than a meme, but every single video shows what the app actually does
so you look at installs per 1,000 views and give every creator their own link so you know who’s driving downloads
and if it’s purchases, it’s real creators using the product, showing how it fits into their day and answering the stuff people wonder about before they buy
that usually gets the fewest views of all three, but the people watching are the closest to buying, so you judge it on sales per creator, not views
the thing we see all the time is brands wanting billions of views and a ton of sales from the same videos
then they run a logo campaign and get upset it didn’t sell, or run product UGC and get upset it didn’t go viral
and neither one actually failed, they were just measured on something they were never made to do
if you want both, run them separately, a logo campaign so people start recognizing your name, and product videos for when they’re actually ready to buy
so figure out what you actually want before you make anything, it changes everything about what you post and how you know if it’s working
a lot of brands are gonna lose money on black friday and won't realize it until january
say your product sells for $100 and costs you $40 to make and ship, so you keep $60
give 30% off, and now you sell it for $70 but it still costs $40, so you keep $30
you just cut your profit per order in half, which means you need to sell twice as much just to make the same money, in the most expensive week of the year to run ads
and it gets worse on paid ads, because your break-even ROAS goes up
at full price you break even around 1.7x, at 30% off you need around 2.3x just to not lose money, while CPMs are at their highest
so here’s how I’d actually run Q4
the offer: raise the order, protect the margin
→ a gift with purchase instead of a discount, something that feels worth $40 but costs you $8, the customer sees value, your margin barely moves
→ spend tiers, spend $10
0 get X, spend $150 get Y, pushes the average order up so the ad cost gets spread over more money
→ bundles, three products for less than buying them separately, still more profit per order than one discounted item
→ a limited holiday edition that’s gone when it’s gone, scarcity does the work a discount usually does
make the offer so good people feel stupid saying no, and you can do that by adding value instead of cutting price
the timeline: buy your customers early, cash in late
nov 1 to 16 → ads are still cheaper, so spend on content that gets people watching, not buying, and build big warm audiences from everyone who watched most of a video
same window → collect emails and phone numbers with early access, a VIP list, a holiday gift guide, every signup is someone you can sell to later for free
nov 17 to 23 → open early access to your list first, they buy before the rush and you pay almost nothing in ads for those sales
black friday to cyber monday → put most of your budget behind your warm audiences and proven creatives, and hit your list hard with email and SMS
december → CPMs usually drop after cyber monday, so keep running, push gift shipping deadlines, and sell your new customers their second order
the real profit is the second order
if the first order breaks even, that’s fine, as long as you’ve got emails, upsells and a reason for them to come back in january
that’s where Q4 actually pays off
Kiyoko Beauty did this and made 43% of its whole store revenue from email during black friday last year
and its owned-channel revenue grew 3.4x
We've scaled 8 ecom brands to 7 figures in the last 3 months
If you want us to do the same for your brand this Q4, then book a call with us: ugc.ninja/andrew
Steal a Brainrot peaked at 25.4M people playing at the same time, and the way it got there is something any game can learn from
it puts players against each other, and that creates reactions, someone losing their best item, a revenge raid, a last second save
reactions are what people film, so every server was producing content without anyone asking
then the devs scheduled big events on purpose, which gave every creator a reason to post on the same day and flooded everyone’s FYP at once
and on august 23rd they did a fake admin war with Grow a Garden’s developer, so both games borrowed each other’s audience in one day, and Roblox hit a record 47.4M players online
so it’s conflict that creates clips, events that sync the creators, and crossovers that bring in new audiences
that’s the creator system we’ve been building for games at UGC Ninja, and @wizofugc broke down how to set it up in this article
the fastest way to fix a stuck ad account is adding new top of funnel creatives
we had an ecom account already spending around $350k a day that had stopped growing
we added a fresh batch of top of funnel ads, claymation cartoons and talking head videos
on the launch weekend daily spend went from $350k to $670k, and $450k of that was going to the new ads
when a big account gets new creatives that actually work, Meta finds new people to show them to, and the whole account wakes up, even the old ads start spending again
if your account's been flat for weeks, look at when you last launched something new before you touch anything else
ok fair I worded that badly lol
the $1M was meta only, and the 18M visits are from everything
paid social is only about 19% of their traffic, roughly 3.5M sessions at under 30 cents a visit, the rest is mostly display and paid search
so yeah their total spend is way bigger than $1M
but this format cooks, we’ve done 8B+ views across our brands so far this year and long AI story ads are some of our best performers too
Andrei Shemet retweeted
Resilia is spending around $1M a month on Facebook ads, and their top ads are 6 minute AI musicals
their store did 18.08M visits last month
the format is pretty simple once you look at it
→ it starts on something that throws you off, so you stop scrolling
→ each scene gets a bit worse, so you keep watching to see where it goes
→ it’s all sung, so it feels more like a show than an ad
→ the product comes in halfway as the turning point, and the rest is things getting better
6 minutes feels long for an ad, but when people watch the whole thing, it gets cheaper to show it to more of them
we’re making ads exactly like this and scaling them to millions a month
if you’re a well-established ecom brand that wants to scale with long form AI story ads like this shoot me a DM
we make, test and run ads for you start to finish
Resilia is spending around $1M a month on Facebook ads, and their top ads are 6 minute AI musicals
their store did 18.08M visits last month
the format is pretty simple once you look at it
→ it starts on something that throws you off, so you stop scrolling
→ each scene gets a bit worse, so you keep watching to see where it goes
→ it’s all sung, so it feels more like a show than an ad
→ the product comes in halfway as the turning point, and the rest is things getting better
6 minutes feels long for an ad, but when people watch the whole thing, it gets cheaper to show it to more of them
we’re making ads exactly like this and scaling them to millions a month
if you’re a well-established ecom brand that wants to scale with long form AI story ads like this shoot me a DM
we make, test and run ads for you start to finish
one of our creator campaigns did 40M views for $50,000 and turned into 4,000 paying users
that’s about $12.50 per paying user
the average in-app purchase through paid ads costs around $74
the creators were real people posting from their own accounts, with AI doing the work nobody wants to, the images, the hook drafts, the variations they’d never have time to make
@nolantoken broke down exactly how that system works in this article, plus the two other ways apps are mixing AI and human UGC right now and where each one falls apart
if you’re trying to get an app to 6 figures MRR, read this before you hire another creator
AI ads are printing for ecom brands right now and I don’t think most brands are tapped in yet
a few supplement and skincare brands figured it out early and they’re scaling hard while everyone else waits
most brands I talk to are scared of it, they think AI will make customers trust them less
and I get it, because what they’ve seen is the bad version, fake AI customers, fake reviews, some uncanny girl swearing a serum changed her life
that stuff does hurt trust, don’t do it
the AI ads that actually work don’t pretend to be anything, a cartoon showing what’s going on inside your knee, the same character showing up in every ad, a product doing something you could never film for real
the customer just wants to know if it helps them, they’re not sitting there wondering how the video was made
we’ve put $4M into AI ads for ecom brands in the last 2 months, and those brands did millions in sales
Holy shi*t who is the genius running this account😭
they average 4M+ views per video
these accounts are printing 100M+ views
with fake AI characters.
and some are even running ecom stores
the product exists but the videos are
100% made with AI
not only do they print views organically
but also work insanely well as ads
& now @ElevenLabs is giving away
$50,000 to whoever makes
the highest quality ad in a competition
winning this is so easy
with the workflow below: 🧵