Drew Levin
Co-founder (tech side) of SideShift, a UGC marketplace that pivoted from matching college students with restaurants to running creator programs for consumer apps (Suno, Clue, Brex, GoWish among those mentioned). Sees payout, view and Spark data across thousands of brands (5,000 new brand sign-ups a month). Guest on the Superwall podcast with Joseph Choi (Jun 2026).
Strong on: manager-to-creator ratios, pay structures that maximise “free views”, engagement-rate thresholds for reposting and Spark Ads, CPM benchmarks over the first 90 days.
Bias to keep in mind: sells the marketplace and its Spark/payout tooling; SideShift also sponsors the Superwall podcast.
Sources: sources/youtube/superwall/2026-06-01-i-studied-1000000-ugc-ads-this-is-what-will-grow-your-app.md.
Notes citing Drew Levin
- Can creators sell your app? Creator–app fit and the "magic moment"The tests for whether influencer/UGC marketing will work for an app — a seconds-long on-screen "magic moment", a deep pool of creators already making content your app slots into, and few competing brands — and what to do when the app itself isn't visual.
- Content creators vs influencers — which to hire for an appWhy Coconote hired content creators (good videos, small followings) instead of influencers, why Cal AI's ex-influencer lead now runs UGC alongside influencers, and the trade-off — UGC gives cheaper views, established influencers give trust that converts.
- Creator outreach at scale — funnel math, emails, calls and referralsHow Cal AI signed 2,000–3,000 creators from ~220,000 contacted (25 assistants sending ~2,000 emails a day, AI-handled replies, a sales call, $100–200 referral bonuses), plus Coconote's rule for spotting reachable creators and why relationships compound.
- Measuring creator and UGC attribution (RPM, spikes, vanity URLs, codes)Practical ways to attribute organic creator content to revenue — reading per-post spikes to get revenue per 1,000 views, secondary engagement signals and a renewal score at scale, vanity domains that redirect to the app, per-creator promo/affiliate codes, and cohort churn checks.
- Organic content that converts vs content that only gets viewsWhy a 41M-view Coconote video earned nothing, and the patterns that do convert — product framed as a solution or identity (not a toy), talking-to-camera formats over looping text, subtle-but-unmissable integrations, and judging creators on paying, retained users.
- Reposting and boosting organic winners (Spark Ads, partnership ads)When to repost a promising UGC video (10–20K views and ≥3% engagement) and when to put paid money behind it (engagement rate >7.5–10%, 3–5× the account's average). Spark/partnership budgets and kill rules, and the counter-evidence that dedicated paid creative beats recycled organic.
- Running a UGC program — campaign managers, coaches and content approvalHow the top UGC programs are staffed and run — 1 campaign manager per ~10 creators, managers vs content coaches, pre-post video reviews, a few "backbone" creators, when the founder can step back (consistent sub-$4–5 CPMs), and tooling for hundreds of creators.
- Short-form hooks and formats that work for apps (2026)A catalogue of formats and hook mechanics practitioners used for apps in 2026 — busy-hands visual hooks, multiple faces, green-screen reactions, credibility listicles, 10-minute story videos, rage bait for AI products, spelled-out URLs — and how a format evolves from founder test to talking head.
- UGC program pay structures — retainers, non-stacked bonuses and "free views"SideShift's 2026 data on what top UGC programs pay ($800/month for 60 cross-posted videos, non-stacked bonuses capped at 1M views, pay only the best platform), realistic CPMs over the first 90 days, and why pure performance deals rarely keep creators.