rates using UGC in their ads. Keeping your emails authentic and genuine can help increase the click-through rate by 73%. 35% of Gen Z trusts UGC 74% increase is found in conversion rates simply because of UGC used in the product pages. Opportunities There are many opportunities in user-generated content. The advantage of UGC is that it is a quick, easy way to reach the masses. Here are some examples: The companies could use social media for branding, and set up contests for the audience to submit their own creations. The consumers and general audience members like to engage. Some have used a storytelling platform to both share and converse with others. To raise awareness, whether it be for an organization, company, or event. Reviews play a major role in a customers decision making. Gain perspectives from members that one wouldn't otherwise get to engage with. Personalization of the content put out; 71% of consumers like personalized ads. Encouraging participation can be weakened by company claims to owning this content. Criticism The term "user-generated content" has received some criticism. The criticism to date has addressed issues of fairness, quality, privacy, the sustainable availability of creative work and effort among legal issues namely related to intellectual property rights such as copyrights etc. Some commentators assert that the term "user" implies an illusory or unproductive distinction between different kinds of "publishers", with the term "users" exclusively used to characterize publishers who operate on a much smaller scale than traditional mass-media outlets or who operate for free. Such classification is said to perpetuate an unfair distinction that some argue is diminishing because of the prevalence and affordability of the means of production and publication. A better response might be to offer optional expressions that better capture the spirit and nature of such work, such as EGC, Entrepreneurial Generated Content (see external reference below). Sometimes creative works made by individuals are lost because there are limited or no ways to precisely preserve creations when a UGC Web site service closes down. One example of such loss is the closing of the Disney massively multiplayer online game "VMK". VMK, like most games, has items that are traded from user to user. Many of these items are rare within the game. Users are able to use these items to create their own rooms, avatars and pin lanyard. This site shut down at 10 pm CDT on