UGC, CARTOON & MOTION
Make an ad that doesn’t look like an ad
Three formats, one decision, made once. UGC is a real person talking straight into a phone camera — you, your crew, or a customer who actually hired you. Cartoon is animation, for a subject that’s dull, technical, or would look grim on film. Motion design is type and graphics moving, for a process, a warranty or a number a camera can’t point at.
You pick based on what you’re selling, not on what’s trending. Content plans start at $1,497 a month for three videos. Extra videos are $175. There is no setup fee.
Real people, real job sites
Disclosed, always
Ships in days, not shoot days
No setup fee. Nothing bills until it’s live. Cancel any month after 90 days. You own everything we make.
Which format fits what you’re selling?
And if the job is showing a real crew doing real work on a real house, a camera beats all three. That’s video and graphics, and we’ll tell you when it’s the right call.
What is a UGC ad, in plain English?
A UGC ad is a paid ad built to look like an ordinary post — one person, one phone camera, talking to the viewer, with no studio lighting and no voiceover artist.
UGC stands for user-generated content. Almost nobody in the trades uses the term, which is fine. The point is that the ad reads as a person, not as a brand.
That matters most on a phone. Facebook’s own research found people scroll the feed 41% faster on a smartphone than on a desktop, and research it cites found viewers recall feed content after 0.25 seconds of exposure. The decision to keep watching lands before your logo finishes fading in.
Ecommerce benchmarks
Most published research on UGC creative is ecommerce — beauty, fitness, fashion — and much of it ships with no stated sample size. Those benchmarks put UGC-style creative at 2.4–3.6% click-through on cold audiences against 1.2–1.8% for polished studio work, fatiguing faster too: 10–14 days before a 25–40% drop, against 18–25 days. Ecommerce numbers, because that is what they are.
Home services, agency-reported
The home-services numbers come from agencies reporting on their own accounts: owner-on-camera ads beating agency-produced creative by 25–40% across 200+ contractor accounts, and before-and-after and time-lapse creative beating polished agency reels by 3–5× across 22 home-service accounts. Self-reported, no independent audit. Directionally consistent, not proof.
The format is cheap enough to test that you don’t need the research settled. What it costs to ignore is the firmer number: 2026 home-services benchmarks put a Google Local Services Ad lead at $53, non-branded search at $149 and roofing at $228.15. Creative that reads as an ad is how you pay the top of that range on every platform at once.
When does a cartoon beat a camera?
A cartoon beats a camera when the thing you’re selling can’t be filmed well, can’t be filmed safely, or no longer exists to film.
A process that happens where nobody can see it — inside a wall, under a slab, or over six months
A product that isn’t photogenic — a water heater, a mini-split, a service plan
A before and after where the “before” was fixed last March and is gone
A seasonal offer that has to be live this week and cannot wait for a shoot day
Anything involving risk or damage you cannot ethically stage — a burst pipe, a mould bloom, storm damage on somebody’s roof
There’s a second reason that only shows up over a year: animation doesn’t age. A filmed ad carries the truck you replaced and the palm trees from whatever month you shot it. An animated one runs in January and July without looking wrong in either.
When is motion design the only option that works?
Motion design is the only option that works when the subject is abstract — a warranty term, a financing number, a five-step process, a guarantee.
A camera has to point at something, and some of the most persuasive things you sell are not things. Motion is also the fastest of the three to produce, because it needs no crew, no client availability and nobody’s permission. For a weather-driven trade that timing is the whole argument: impact windows before storm season, HVAC before July. A filmed campaign needs a shoot day on somebody’s calendar. An animated one needs a brief.
Published 2026 industry rates
$1,500–$3,500 per minute for flat motion graphics
$7,000–$20,000 per minute for commercial 2D
$9,680 median quote for one custom 60-second explainer
Here
$175 for an extra video on any plan
$1,497 for a full content sprint
One shoot day, one month of content.
Volume is why the plans are counted in videos per month rather than in campaigns. An analysis of $1.3 billion in Meta ad spend across 550,000+ ads from 6,000+ advertisers between September 2025 and January 2026 found only 5–8% of ads become real winners, and about half never get meaningful spend at all. You don’t find the winner by making one perfect ad. You find it by making twelve and letting the platform tell you which one it is.
When is none of the three right?
No cartoon outperforms honest footage of your team pulling a failed compressor at 7am in August. When that’s the story we shoot it — real cameras on real job sites, drone flown by a licensed Part 107 pilot, no stock library ever. That’s video and graphics, and it has its own page.
Who’s on camera, and what do we disclose?
If someone is paid or compensated to appear in your ad, that relationship is disclosed in the ad. Every time.
This is federal law, not a preference. The FTC’s rule on consumer reviews and testimonials, 16 CFR Part 465, took effect 21 October 2024. It bans creating, buying or disseminating fake or false reviews and testimonials — explicitly including ones generated by AI and ones attributed to a person who does not exist. It requires a clear and conspicuous disclosure when a testimonial comes from an officer, manager, employee or agent of the business. It bans incentives conditioned on the review being positive. Civil penalties run to $51,744 per violation. The Endorsement Guides, 16 CFR Part 255, separately require any material connection — payment, free work, employment, family — to be disclosed wherever the audience wouldn’t expect it.
We don’t fabricate a customer.
If a person on screen says they hired you, they hired you.
We don’t script a review.
We ask questions and use the answers.
We don’t generate a person who doesn’t exist.
No synthetic spokesperson, no AI face, no stock library standing in for your customer.
If your employee is recommending you, the ad says so.
Your office manager can be great on camera. She just can’t be presented as a stranger who found you on Google.
Nobody else in this market writes this paragraph. It costs us nothing, and it’s why your ads won’t be the ones a competitor screenshots and reports to the FTC.
What does it cost?
Content
$1,497
per month
3 videos a month
Content + Ads
$2,297
per month
4 videos, plus 4 fresh ad creatives
Site + Content
$3,444
per month
6 videos a month
Full Engine
$5,444
per month
12 videos a month
One-time, no retainer required
Content sprint
$1,497
One shoot day, one month of content
Brand film
$2,997
One cinematic hero video for your site and ads
Launch campaign
$1,997
Grand opening, new location or new service. Creative plus a 30-day push
Extra video $175
Extra graphic $75
No setup fee. Nothing bills until it’s live. Cancel any month after 90 days.
No setup fee. 30-day money back on setup if the system isn’t live. Nothing bills until it’s live. Cancel any month after 90 days with 30 days notice, no exit fee. You own the domain, the site, the leads, the content and the ad accounts — full export in seven days, in writing.
Questions
Taking five clients this quarter
Pick the format on a call, not from a page
Bring one thing you’re trying to sell this quarter. We’ll tell you which format fits it, or that none of them do and you need a camera instead. Same call either way, and it’s free. A publicly traded company runs the same lead system.
No setup fee. Nothing bills until it’s live. Cancel any month after 90 days. You own everything.
We’re in Vero Beach, and most of what we do is marketing in Vero Beach and the towns either side of it. Serving Indian River, Brevard, St. Lucie and Martin counties.