CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Dec. 15, 2015 /PRNewswire/ — Vivoom, a mobile media company that enables storytelling between advertisers and consumers, has released an analysis of more than 4,000 videos to understand some of the common pitfalls of marketing campaigns that tap into the power of user-generated content. While the vast majority of consumer co-created marketing content is brand-appropriate and effective, Vivoom found that, on average, 6.6 percent of the videos reviewed were problematic for brands.

Vivoom’s platform enables advertisers to combine the strength of their brand assets with the authenticity of consumer voices to generate short, co-created mobile video spots that are shared socially across the consumer’s own social networks while ensuring full brand-safety due to Vivoom’s moderation technology. It is this proprietary content management capability that allowed Vivoom to study what content was rejected by brand clients, analyze demographic data on those creating the questionable content and understand why it was deemed unacceptable. Vivoom developed five categories to classify problematic content:

• Inappropriate or objectionable content – profanity, nudity, hate speech, etc.
• Off-Brand – creation of content that isn’t in keeping with a brand’s image or campaign objectives
• Copyright violation – uses content that is owned by another entity (e.g., a musician or artist)
• Unapproved people in video – used for people under a certain age if a brand is unsure if they (or their parents/guardians) agreed to be in video

At 43 percent of the flagged videos, off-brand content was the most common cause for consumer-created videos to be rejected by brand moderators using Vivoom’s platform. Copyright violations were the second most common cause for rejection, at 28 percent. Typically these were the innocent or inadvertent inclusion of music but are viewed as unacceptable nevertheless. 21 percent of the videos were deemed inappropriate or objectionable. Finally, 8 percent of the videos included unapproved people (typically children under the age of 13).

Consumer backlash against interruptive advertising is driving brands’ interest in co-created content – particularly on mobile, the channel that now accounts for 52 percent of consumer screen time. According to industry research from independent firms like Millward Brown, Ipsos and Forrester, user generated content is 35 percent more memorable, three times more trusted and 20 percent more influential on purchase intent.

« The data shows the power of user-generated content and collaborative mobile advertising; but many brands are scared to death of the potential for trouble with user generated content – and rightly so, » said Katherine Hays, CEO of Vivoom. « A quick tour of Google images makes it clear why. Without a reliable way to assure the content is appropriate and on-brand, user-generated content can be a minefield many marketers simply decide isn’t worth crossing. Providing a way for marketers to work with their customers to create authentic, high-quality, brand-safe content at scale is what sets Vivoom apart. »

Additional findings of the research focused on the demographics of those creating the off-brand content and the type of content they were creating:

Age