We already know AI is used for moderating and creating content, that’s nothing new. The challenge at hand is understanding how to use this AI in this manner responsibly — and strategically. The potential of AI is vast, but responsible innovation and safeguards are crucial, and world leaders are taking note. 

US president Joe Biden signed an executive order on the safe, secure and trustworthy use of artificial intelligence. And just recently the Council of the European Union and European Parliament reached a provisional agreement on the Artificial Intelligence Act —  the world’s first comprehensive AI regulation.

Ensuring transparency about use of AI is paramount. It’s crucial to retain human oversight, ensuring that AI remains a supportive tool rather than taking complete control, especially when it comes to using AI for content creation and moderation.

With that in mind, we’re going to explore findings from our own research and discuss the guiding principles that ensure that your use of AI is responsible and brand-safe.

The role of AI in content creation

In short, content moderation involves screening and removing any content that goes against set deadlines, and AI can improve this process.

Here we’ll walk through how you can use AI to streamline your content supply chain, all the while ensuring responsible and considerate implementation.

Content moderation before AI

Consumers love to contribute reviews about your brand. This user-generated content (UGC) goldmine fosters trust and drives sales by making connections between you and your audience.

But this content won’t always necessarily align with your brand values. It might contain inappropriate language, prohibited content, reveal personal information, or even aim to manipulate perceptions of your brand, undermining that trust you’ve cultivated.

All of your clients likely have varying standards for what constitutes acceptable content. For instance, a beer company might embrace discussions about alcohol, while a children’s brand probably won’t. Or hopefully won’t, anyway.

Before AI was on the scene, there were different content moderation solutions. Specifically, a manual approach.

A manual approach requires human moderators to review client preferences within a content management system, deciding whether to approve or reject each piece of content. Initially, this was the method we used at Bazaarvoice.

Results were generally fine. Human moderators ensure content appropriateness and authenticity. But it’s seriously time-consuming. On average it takes twenty hours before a review goes live. This goes against consumer preference for content recency, who scan the latest reviews for up-to-date product information.

Also there’s the fact that engaged consumers expected their voices to be swiftly acknowledged. Delays in posting reviews can lead to a loss of engagement with your brand. This presents a core challenge: how can you ensure rapid, on-site content availability, while still upholding authenticity?

How to use AI in content moderation

The answer? By leveraging machine learning — a branch of AI that learns from existing data to derive patterns. For example, At Bazaarvoice, we possess massive amounts of data, with over 800 million unique review contents historically, growing by 9 million each month.

Data like this can be used to train machine learning models to identify undesirable content and automatically flag any new content matching that profile. If you’re getting started with AI content moderation, follow these steps:

1. Engage existing moderators to label data for model training and validation
2. Data scientists utilize this labeled data to train models tailored to one or more client use cases
3. Deploy these models to a machine learning inference system, for it to approve or reject new content collected for your clients
4. Share client configurations with the AI machine learning system so that the content can be moderated to meet each client’s individual use case

Consider the evolving landscape too. Consumer behaviors change, new trends emerge, and language evolves. What if AI tech can’t adapt to this? You’re risking brand trust and consumer safety, and no one wants that. Look at review bombing, for example, which usually happens in response to social or political dynamics that are near-impossible to predict.

Content operations team can respond to these events though by training new models, adjusting existing ones, or fine tuning the client configurations to ensure only appropriate content, appropriate authentic content ends up on-site

AI should augment human effort, not replace it

This approach ensures that humans remain in charge. Clients specify what kind of content they consider appropriate or not, ensuring the AI only acts within their predefined parameters.

A responsible AI approach means better results for clients too. Currently, we moderate 73% of UGC with machine learning models, providing clients with filtered UGC tailored to their needs within seconds, not hours. A huge improvement on the hours required with solely-human moderators!

Responsible AI content creation for brands

Most brands tend to take the initiative to craft their own content, they don’t rely only on UGC. Specifically, they carefully strategize the images, messages, and products they intend to highlight across their social media platforms, websites, and other channels.

But creating all this content is time consuming. Most companies employ social media managers or similar dedicated to this task. Imagine if you could combine the skill of a social media manager with the utility of AI to automatically generate content. It sounds pretty remarkable, like mind reading even.

When clients onboard with Bazaarvoice, they link their social media accounts, providing us with ample data points showcasing their preferred topics and communication style.

When a user selects an image, our machine learning algorithms decipher its contents, telling us what they want to post about. We can also glean information about the products they aim to showcase from product tag data and learn their communication style through their social media history.

After clicking on “auto generate caption,” these data points undergo processing by our (cutting edge!) generative AI to craft a caption about the image and products in the client’s voice. The social media manager can then approve, refine, or reject the messaging.

It creates an incredible, symbiotic relationship The tool combines the convenience of generative AI, while retaining the authentic voice of the client, allowing for revisions as needed. Once again, the AI acts as an assistant rather than a replacement.

In practice, many clients tend to tweak the suggested messaging, but they still appreciate how this feature jumpstarts their creative process. It’s akin to having a muse — inspiring human creativity based on past elements.

We introduced this product on our social commerce platform last year and it was an instant hit. Which got us thinking, can we do the same thing for our consumers?

Responsible AI creation for consumers

There’s an issue with customer reviews. According to our research, 68% of consumers feel uncertain about what to include in a review, meaning many end up lacking detail or veering way, way off-topic.

Like with content moderation, can AI step in to assist consumers in crafting better, more informative reviews? This would help shopping become more transparent, because the more reviews we have, the more informed we are.

For example, let’s look at how Bazaarvoice Content Coach works. First, AI ideates which topics would be useful to include in a review, based on each product and our client’s catalog. These topics are then presented to the consumer. As the consumer writes, the system highlights the topics they’ve addressed.

What’s great about this approach is its blend of convenience and enjoyment. It guides users to write helpful reviews while making the process fun! Or at least as fun as writing a product review can be. It’s like a form of AI content moderation, but reversed. It functions as a coach rather than a ghostwriter, empowering users to refine their reviews.

Since its launch, Content Coach has facilitated the creation of almost 400,000 authentic reviews, with nearly 87% of users finding it beneficial — a testament to how AI can be used to assist content creation, not own.

Take AI assistance even further

These are all prime examples of leveraging generative AI in a responsible (but beneficial) manner. They enhance the consumer experience while maintaining authenticity, effectively coaching brands and consumers to maximize their review’s impact.

Examples like above illustrate how an AI content moderation strategy augments human efforts responsibly and optimizes your content supply chain. We’re only scratching the surface here though. Discover the transformative potential of AI in authentically shaping your content strategy with our on-demand masterclass: How to use AI strategically and responsibly.

And while almost all shoppers use ratings and reviews (88%) to evaluate or learn more about products, fake reviews are affecting their ability to confidently turn to reviews as a trusted source when making product purchasing decisions.

And preserving that trust isn’t just about maintaining your customer base and increasing sales. It’s also about maintaining regulatory compliance. Government agencies all over the world enforce consumer protection laws that prohibit unscrupulous marketing practices — including fake, deceptive or misleading reviews.

In the US, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) recently announced two important regulations they’re taking to battle fake reviews:

1. They published the final Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising. This is the first refresh of the Guides since 2009 and it provides new and updated guidance around endorsements by social media influencers as well as ratings and reviews 
2. The proposed Rule on the Use of Consumer Reviews and Testimonials which clarifies what constitutes a “fake” review

What does the proposed FTC regulation say?

The new regulation proposed by the FTC will strengthen the agency’s ability to impose significant monetary penalties in cases involving fake and deceptive consumer reviews — up to $50,120 for each offending review to be imposed each time the review is viewed by a consumer. The aim is to ensure that consumers are provided with a more authentic, honest shopping experience and businesses are able to better protect their brand.

In its notice of proposed regulation, the FTC explained the need for the new rule by citing examples of clearly deceptive practices from its recent cases. They specifically called out the widespread emergence of generative AI, which will make it easier for bad actors to create fake reviews.

According to the FTC’s Director of the Bureau of Consumer Protection, “Our proposed rule on fake reviews shows that we’re using all available means to attack deceptive advertising in the digital age” and “should help level the playing field for honest companies.”

The proposed new rule clarifies that businesses are prohibited from:

• Selling or obtaining fake consumer reviews and testimonials. Writing or selling reviews by someone who doesn’t exist or has never bought the product
• Review hijacking. Using or repurposing a consumer review written for one product so that it appears to have been written for a substantially different product
• Buying positive or negative reviews. Providing compensation conditioned on the writing of consumer reviews expressing a particular sentiment, either positive or negative
• Illegally suppressing negative reviews. Using unjustified legal threats, other intimidation, or false accusations to prevent or remove a negative consumer review or hiding a negative review from the website
• Using “insider” reviews. Having employees or other insiders write reviews or testimonials of its products or services, without clearly disclosing their relationships
• Selling or buying fake social media indicators. Selling false indicators of social media influence, like fake followers or views
• Fake websites. Creating or controlling a website that claims to provide independent opinions about a category of products or services that includes its own products or services

As the champions of authentic shopping experiences, we at Bazaarvoice fully agree with the premise of this proposed rule and already provide our customers with powerful tools and processes to help them comply. This is simply another strong and welcomed step to help protect brands and the sanctity of consumer reviews and the role they play in commerce.

3 ways to protect your brand

Whether you’re in the US or another country, here’s the three golden rules we instruct our clients and partners to follow, to ensure they protect their brand, and their bottom line, from fake reviews.

1. Be transparent about who you collect reviews from, and how you do it

While consumers continue to trust reviews, they’re increasingly on the lookout for any signs of untrustworthy content. Typically, the behaviors that causes the most suspicion among consumers are:

• Multiple reviews with similar wording on the same product (55%)
• Review content not matching the product (49%) 
• Bad grammar/spelling mistakes (36%) 
• An overwhelming amount of five star/positive reviews (35%) 

Consumers have a right to trust the reviews they encounter and businesses have a responsibility to ensure this content is legitimate. The importance of this trust is further echoed in the guidance being put out by governments and consumer agencies around the world, echoed by the proposed FTC regulation. 

There’s a variety of ways businesses can ask customers to provide a review — review request emails, directly from e-commerce sites, sampling campaigns, or in a social media campaign. Additionally, brands may choose to share the reviews they collect with their retail partners so that consumers can find them anywhere they’re looking to make a purchasing decision. 

Regardless of how a review is collected, brands should never ask for or incentivize positive reviews. If consumers are offered a free product, promotional material (such as discounts or coupons), or a chance to win something of value in exchange for providing an unbiased review, then we recommend adding descriptors such as “this reviewer received a free product in exchange for their honest feedback” to any reviews collected using a promotion. 

2. Don’t screen out negative reviews — find value in them 

While some might think that negative reviews are an absolute disaster for their brand to have, they’re actually a necessity for your ratings and reviews program to thrive. In a survey we ran, over half (60%) of respondents said that negative reviews are as important as positive reviews in their decision to buy a product. The majority claimed that negative reviews contain more detailed info on product pros and cons, while 32% think that they are less likely to be fake reviews.

In addition to giving consumers a true feel for a product or service, negative reviews are an opportunity for engaging with consumers and identifying potential product improvements. 

Responding to, and taking action on, negative feedback will protect your brand by fostering trust and loyalty with customers.

3. Have a zero tolerance policy for fake reviews

Not protecting yourself against fake reviews undoubtedly puts your brand at risk. In the same research as above, respondents said that fraudulent reviews from a brand’s employees (42%) and from other customers (34%) would cause them to lose trust in a brand.

We also found that after losing trust in a brand, a vast majority (82%) of consumers would avoid using the brand ever again. If shoppers suspect a product to have fake reviews:

• 36% wouldn’t buy the product
• 28% wouldn’t trust the brand,
• 27% wouldn’t trust the site’s other reviews
• 25% wouldn’t purchase from the website
• 18% said ‘all of the above’

Companies should be aware of the possibility of fraudulent content through a variety of means, including disruptive or trolling activity, commercial messages, generative AI submissions, illegitimate or degrading content by a competitor, and self-promotion by employees.

We help protect our clients from a variety of different types of fraud. Using textual moderation and data driven, anti-fraud processes to evaluate reviews in the Bazaarvoice Network helps us to protect our clients and their shoppers. 

Our biggest and best piece of advice to protect your brand is to ensure you have a process in place to detect fake reviews, and to not allow them to be posted on your site. Hiring a third-party ratings and reviews provider and moderator is a huge help for this task. 

Protect your brand now

User-generated content is necessary in commerce today. But a reputation for fake reviews will damage your brand reputation as well as your bottom line. Brands and retailers need to continuously and proactively work to combat fake reviews by ensuring they have the right processes in place to protect themselves and their shoppers.

The steps we’ve outlined above, as well as the new guidance and proposed regulation from the FTC, will help you achieve this.

When shoppers can turn to ratings and reviews as sources of truth, it helps them to feel confident in purchasing from your company. Which boosts your bottom line and who doesn’t want that?

Learn more at Bazaarvoice.com/fakereviews.

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The authenticity movement: building consumer trust without fake reviews

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According to our research, 75% of consumers said that if they notice a fake review for a product on a site, it would impact their trust in reviews for other products on the same site. This is why we at Bazaarvoice work so diligently to screen out negative reviews before they are even published. 

After years of experience moderating content, we as consumers know that it can be simple to discern fake reviews by their content. According to our survey of 10,000 global shoppers, respondents said the top ways they spot fake reviews are:

1. Multiple reviews with similar wording (56%)
2. Review content doesn’t match the product (53%)
3. An overwhelming number of 5* reviews (36%)
4. Grammar errors and misspeling (35%)
5. Only a rating with no written review or imagery (31%)

These can all be indicators of a content’s true nature and give you a heads up that something may be suspect. However, text review alone is not enough to catch all fake reviews. Because of this, we use both text patterns and data signals to monitor behaviors similar to what you would see with financial transactions.

Using text and data signals

Often, fake reviews are identified by much more than what’s said or how it was said, but with what information that can be gathered using other data signals about a person and the review/s they left. When moderating content, we look for what patterns or behaviors do not belong.

For instance, if the same person reviews an item in two different countries, that may not be suspect on its own. But if we see they are leaving them in rapid succession when they couldn’t possibly be in two places at once, then we know they’re trying to provide false information. So we’ll take their content down and block them.

This isn’t unlike the technology used to ensure credit card usage and purchases are made by the true owner. This is an extra level of machine moderation that goes beyond the human moderation that we also use, in which we have hundreds of people manually moderation reviews as well.

This additional layer of security helps tremendously in our ease in efficiency of validating reviews, simply because of the sheer amount that we receive, and because nefarious actors who leave fake reviews are constantly innovating.

The digital pattern of fake reviews 

Because fraudsters are continuously evolving, we never consider our moderation tactics to be final. We’re always working to educate ourselves while working with the most innovative vendors to identify new trends. What’s probably the biggest pillar of modern review moderation is that fraud is cumulative. 

By this, I mean that one review won’t look like much or appear out of place. One review will also rarely skew a star rating or the overall perception of a product. Unless it is the first review ever left for that product — and even then, it won’t be for long.

We’re focused instead on finding the kind of fraud that creates widespread unfair understanding about the product shoppers will be receiving. And typically one random spare review won’t do that. 

Moderating sponsored content

When consumers are looking at user-generated content such as ratings, reviews, and customer photos and videos, they’re right to assume the content comes from shoppers just like themselves, with no agenda or stake in the brand or product’s performance. They should be able to assume that what they’re reading or seeing is unbiased, not paid for, and from a neutral third party.

These assumptions allow shoppers to know they’re getting an authentic, genuine, and accurate description about someone’s opinion or experience. 

This is exactly why influencers are legally required to disclose that a product they post about or review is an #ad when sponsored by a brand. Now, authoritative bodies are imposing these same regulations on everyday consumers posting reviews.

In said reviews, consumers expect brands to disclose any relationship that could influence a reviewer’s ability to be impartial. This includes circumstances such as:

• When the poster received an incentive to leave a review. This includes free products, discounts, an opportunity to be part of a sweepstakes, or other potential items of value in exchange for an honest review. Really anything that would drive a consumer to write a review when they likely wouldn’t have on their own accord 
• If the poster has material relation to the brand. This might mean they are an employee, partner or vendor of the brand, or someone whose livelihood is dependent on the product or brand’s success
• If the poster has a close personal connection to the brand. While you don’t need to disclose if your husband works in-store for a big retailer from which you bought the product, you’d need to disclose if he husband is the CFO of the brand that sells the product

When in doubt, more disclosure is better. 27% of consumers think brands with fake content should be fined up to 30% of their revenue. So it’s certainly something shoppers are thinking about — and dislike.

How brands should be moderating sponsored content

The most important aspect is that brands need to be clear and conspicuous about their sponsored content. All disclosures should be obvious to a consumer. They shouldn’t have to do the same amount of sleuthing to find a review disclosure as say, when they’re “researching” about someone they met online that they’re about to go on a first date with. It should require no additional clicks beyond where they saw the original review. 

For example, even if the review is long and is at risk of being cut off with a “see more text” option, all disclosures about that review need to appear before the text cut off. Do you have a cute name for your rewards or sampling program through which shoppers submit incentivized reviews? Don’t assume a new consumer knows what that cute name is or means and use it in the disclosure (“This reviewer is a *CuteSamplingProgramName* Member!”).

Be obvious about how the review is incentivized. This is relevant to reviews on product pages as well as all social media posts.

One thing that unfortunately isn’t immediately considered iwhen it comes to disclosing sponsored content is ADA compliance. When including images or videos, make sure your disclosures are clear and specific, while also being written in addition to auditory. 

Work with the right content moderating partner

Incentivized reviews are not less valuable than organic ones, but they are less trusted if they’re not properly badged with obvious and understandable disclosures. To make sure your shoppers know that your content is authentic and trustworthy, you need to be as transparent as possible. Including disclosures on incentivized reviews is not only one of the best ways to achieve that, but has become legally required, as well. 

Not all fraud looks like fraud at first. But once it’s discovered, at Bazaarvoice we’ll remove all content associated with the user and block future submissions as best we can. Additionally, we’re very selective about who we partner with to make sure any content partners align with our values.

The Bazaarvoice Authentic Reviews Trust Mark is the gold standard seal of approval to prove your content is genuine.

Learn more about Bazaarvoice moderation and authenticity here.

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Capitalizing on the authenticity movement

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While almost all (88%) shoppers use ratings and reviews to evaluate or learn more about products, fake reviews can affect their ability to confidently turn to reviews as a trusted source. This can prevent them from making a purchase and have a significantly negative impact on your revenue. In the current economical climate, that is not something brands and retailers can afford.

To better understand how fake reviews affect consumer mindset and behavior, we surveyed 10,000 global shoppers. Here’s what we learned.  

Consumers are scrutinizing reviews

Thanks to increased media coverage, shoppers are aware and evaluating reviews for authenticity. According to our survey, the top five factors that make consumers suspicious that a product has fake reviews are:

As consumers have become more shrewd and skeptical of marketing and advertising practices as a whole, they’re constantly evaluating product reviews to look for red flags. And if they do spot what they perceive to be a fake or fraudulent review, 81% would avoid using that brand again.

Consumer trust is affected by fake reviews

Nearly all (97%) of our survey respondents said that fake reviews make them lose trust in a brand. Some instances of fake or inauthentic reviews shoppers look out for include reviews generated by a bot, undisclosed incentivized reviews, and reviews written by someone who didn’t purchase the product

The thing with inauthentic or fake reviews isn’t that they’ll simply cause a consumer roll their eyes or skip past it. Losing trust is losing revenue. We found that once consumers lose trust in a brand:

• 81% will avoid using that brand again
• 48% leave a negative review
• 25% wouldn’t purchase from the website
• 16% will post [negatively] about the brand on social media

It isn’t just one potential customer you might be alienating — that one fake review can cause just one customer to spread the news of your untrustworthiness across their social pages, where their reach might be in the 100’s.

Having fake reviews has major consequences on consumer trust and could ultimately impact your business’ bottom line.  

Consumers think fake reviews should be regulated

In a landmark settlement, fashion brand Fashion Nova was recently fined $4.2million by the FTC for suppressing negative reviews. It served as a wake up call to other brands to be honest and authentic with about the reviews they receive. And consumers are on board with this punishment too.

Not only will consumers punish brands who have fake reviews by taking their money elsewhere, they also want them to be regulated and fined more formally by the relevant powers. 70% of global consumers think the retail industry needs a new set of standards to combat fake reviews. And when asked what these standards should entail:

Our survey also asked what an appropriate level of punishment for brands in breach of these standards would be and 27% of respondents suggested a fine of almost 30% of the brand’s revenue.

This is up from a suggested 16% fine when we last ran this survey (in 2020) — evidently consumers feel that this violation of trust warrants an increasingly significant consequences for brands.  

The takeaways for brands: Embrace authenticity and transparency in your reviews

All of the above proves the massive risk that fake reviews present for your business. Shoppers, while they continue to trust reviews, are always on the lookout for any signs of untrustworthy content.

Consumers have a right to trust the reviews they encounter, and, moreover, businesses have a responsibility to ensure this content is legitimate. We believe that authenticity and trust in ratings and reviews is foundational to their value for shoppers, brands, and retailers.  

At Bazaarvoice, we have three golden rules when it comes to how companies should protect consumer trust in reviews:  

1. Don’t allow fake reviews. Companies should be aware of the possibility of fraudulent content through a variety of means, including disruptive or trolling activity, commercial messages, automated submissions (e.g. bots, programs, and scripts), illegitimate or degrading content by a competitor, and self-promotion by employees. This is a big part of how we serve our clients. Using both textual moderation and data driven anti-fraud processes to evaluate reviews in the Bazaarvoice Network helps us to protect our clients and their shoppers 
2. Don’t screen out negative content — find value in it. 71% of our survey respondents said that negative reviews are as important as positive reviews in their purchasing decisions. The majority claimed that negative reviews contain more detailed info on product pros and cons, while 54% think that they’re less likely to be fraudulent. Negative reviews are also an opportunity for engaging with consumers and identifying potential product improvements. We have endless stories from clients that have used the feedback from their customer reviews to help inform all parts of their businesses. Brands who respond to negative feedback will build trust and loyalty with their customers 
3. Be transparent about how you collect reviews. There’s a variety of ways that a business can ask customers to provide reviews, including through review request emails, a sampling campaign, or on social media. Regardless of how a review is collected, you shouldn’t ask for positive reviews. Consumers should always feel empowered to provide their honest feedback. If consumers are offered a free product, promotional material, or a chance to win something of value in exchange for providing an unbiased review, then the review should explicitly indicate this. We recommend adding descriptors like, ”This reviewer received a free product in exchange for their honest feedback” to any reviews that were collected using a promotion 

Beat fake reviews with the right reviews provider

Simply put, a reputation for fake reviews can (and will) damage your brand. As consumer trust of media, business, and marketing continues to decline, brands and retailers need to continuously work to combat fake reviews to ensure that shoppers can continue to use ratings and reviews as sources of truth.

At Bazaarvoice, we continue to be committed to the protection of authentic content on behalf of our clients. In fact, a recent Forrester Study of Bazaarvoice found that our moderation filters reduce time brands spend evaluating content by 75%.

Learn more about Bazaarvoice Ratings & Reviews here.

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The authenticity movement: building consumer trust without fake reviews

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Using our expertise as a content moderation leader, we’ve compiled this guide because we know first-hand that you need to maintain quality standards to be trustworthy and effective. This will give you a competitive edge, elevate your brand reputation, and position you as an industry leader.

Chapters:

1. What types of UGC do brands moderate?
2. Why is content moderation important for user-generated campaigns?
3. UGC moderation tactics
4. Make content moderation easier

Imagine you’re shopping online. You choose a t-shirt you like and see it has tons of glowing reviews. But then you notice something suspicious: There isn’t a single negative review. And when you take a closer look, you can’t tell if the positive reviews were written by real customers. 

Time to find a new brand.

If that sounds familiar, you’re among the 40% of consumers that will stop engaging with a brand after seeing just one piece of fake UGC (user-generated content).

One of a brand’s core responsibilities is to provide a positive and authentic online experience for its audience. And that requires constant content moderation. Toxic and fake UGC has been on the rise since March 2020, and the need for moderating online is increasing along with it.

Because even though UGC is created by customers (or at least should be), it’s still a brand’s responsibility to ensure that it’s appropriate and trustworthy.

What types of UGC do brands moderate?

UGC refers to images, videos, audio, or text created and published by a brand’s customers, contributors, fans, ambassadors, or even employees. It can be found in many different types of content, including product reviews, community forums, social media posts, blogs, or event photos.

UGC is considered quality if it’s created by real, non-paid users and conforms to your brand and community guidelines, industry, and audience expectations.

Low-quality UGC

There’s some forms of UGC that meet quality standards in one context but not in others. For example, it doesn’t matter much if an image is unattractive in a user review — that might even make it more authentic. But it probably isn’t a piece of content you’d want to repurpose for landing page content or promo emails.

Here’s some hallmarks of low-quality UGC:

• Blurry images
• Language or images not in line with your brand
• Mentioning competitors
• Misspellings or grammatical mistakes

Prohibited UGC

Besides fake or dishonest UGC (like paid content), brands should always prohibit toxic UGC, regardless of the platform. Abi Schuman, Senior Director of Content Management Services at Bazaarvoice, notes that while it’s easy to want a high volume of UGC, that volume isn’t worth it if the UGC is toxic or fake. “Lawsuits and marketing to rebuild a bad public image are expensive,” warns Schuman.

Toxic content includes:

Why is content moderation important for user-generated campaigns?

For e-commerce retailers, a content moderator is responsible for moderating content on your own website, your social media platforms, and any other channel you own where users can submit content (like a user forum you host).

Moderation can be the responsibility of human beings, automated software, or a combination of the two.

Content moderation is important for user-generated campaigns because it protects your brand, your customers, and your communities. It can also help to better serve customers or find brand ambassadors. In the course of moderating content, you could find really good UGC that you can repurpose on other channels.

This might include customers you want to give extra attention to because they’re a great advocate. Or customers that had a bad experience and need some white-glove treatment.

Approaches to content moderation

Honestly, content moderation can build or destroy your brand. Authentic customer photos that display your product in an appealing way encourage others to buy, giving your brand a competitive edge. But toxic UGC that’s published prior to moderation can cause a PR nightmare that quickly spirals out of control.

You should implement a content moderation process and use technology to support your efforts, and make your content moderation scalable. We’ve adapted some basic categories from Spectrum Labs to outline how the process might look, depending on when you moderate the content.

• Proactive moderation: Also known as pre-moderation, a person or tool publishes, rejects, or edits UGC before it is published.
• Post moderation: In this approach, a person or tool reviews UGC after publication. This means that UGC goes live prior to moderation.
• Reactive moderation: In the reactive moderation approach, other users can flag inappropriate content for the moderator(s) to delete.
• Real-time automated moderation: Automated moderation means that all UGC submitted to an online platform is automatically accepted, rejected, or sent to human moderation, according to the platform’s specific guidelines and rules. This depends on artificial intelligence and machine learning.

While automation is fallible and prone to misjudgments, just like people, it also reduces the need for manual reviews, which minimizes the negative mental health impact of severe, toxic, or disturbing content. That’s because that content is blocked before human moderators are exposed to it.

UGC content moderation tactics

Content moderation policies and tools vary depending on the brand and the channel on which the content appears. But the goal of content moderation teams is to keep truth and transparency as a first priority — identify false or prohibited content and encourage and amplify authentic content.

Here’s some best practices as you navigate the rocky landscape of online content moderation.

Embrace the negative UGC

You shouldn’t hide information to get more people to buy.

“UGC is threatened when businesses are not actually interested in the truth,” says Schuman. “Reviews help people make purchasing decisions but they also help businesses know how consumers feel about their products.”

According to Schuman, if customer feedback isn’t positive, brands should face that head-on and make product improvements. Hiding low-star content or soliciting reviews in a way that drives high star ratings may result in a temporary spike in purchases. But will also lead to more returns. 

And more than likely, customers will see right through those tactics anyway and will take their business to a brand that shows both positives and negatives.

In fact, some negative reviews are actually beneficial to maintaining transparency and fostering trust. “When I am [shopping] on a site and see no low-star content, that raises red flags for me,” says Schuman. “It also personally makes the content less useful to me. I want to know the good and the bad.”

With this knowledge, customers will be able to weigh the pros and cons to see if your product is a good fit for them, like the example below from Amazon.

In the above example, there’s a variety of reviews, mostly positive, along with a few negative ones. In reading these reviews, customers can identify why the product isn’t a fit for some people and if any of those reasons apply to them.

Many customers may even look for the lowest-star reviews first. A low-star review helps establish realistic expectations and informed purchasing and lowers the risk of misinformation. Consumers are aware that nothing is perfect, and there will always be cons. So, if a company tries to pretend otherwise, it’s a major red flag.

However, it’s worth noting that if you think a bad review isn’t authentic — for example, you suspect it’s trolling from a rival brand — take steps to verify the reviewer’s purchase.

Identify the reviewer

Another useful content moderation tactic you can do to ensure quality UGC is to identify the reviewer. What’s their name? Where are they from? Are they an employee? Offering this level of detail boosts the credibility of the review and helps to assure prospective customers that your brand isn’t keeping secrets or spreading disinformation.

Ask for a customer’s first name and location when they leave a review. Then when you repurpose testimonial content on a landing page, include that information when possible. If you don’t have reviewer information, but your brand solicited the testimonial, you can look up the reviewer’s email address in your CMS and ask their permission to use their name and location.

If you find UGC on a social platform and want to use it for marketing purposes, be sure to ask permission from the original creator. Then, give them credit if they grant permission, as @claireseurope does below.

Disclose payments and biases

Sponsored content is common, especially on social media platforms like YouTube and Instagram. But creators have to make it clear when they’re being paid for a promotion. They can be penalized if they don’t label that content as an ad.

So be clear about what sponsorships the creators receive and make your audience completely aware if the creator is being paid to review the product. Of course, this has the potential to color the audience’s opinion of the product, but prospective customers will appreciate your brand’s transparency and be more likely to trust other reviews.

Disclosing bias can be as simple as adding some text in front of the review, like in the example below from Home Depot Canada.

“When in doubt, disclose,” advises Schuman. “Put yourself in your consumers’ shoes. When you’re shopping online and reading a review to decide to buy something, would you approach the review differently if you knew they got it for free, if it was written by an employee, was a verified purchase, or written by an expert of some sort? If you think it would, even ever so slightly, color your perception, you should badge and disclose.”

Add a tag on reviews from verified buyers

If a product page is full of glowing reviews, but there’s no proof that they came from real customers, your audience won’t trust the reviews and may lose trust in your brand altogether. At Amazon, you’ll often see reviews with a “Verified Purchase” badge.

A “verified purchase” badge is a good indication that the review is of high quality since the reviewer did purchase the item. If you (or a third-party provider) collect UGC from post-interaction emails, sweepstakes, or social media companies, you can use a review syndicator (like, ahem, Bazaarvoice) to authenticate and match that content to the products on retailer websites.

Verified purchase badges are then easily incorporated into your marketing efforts and distributed to thousands of retailers.

Share attribute information

Sharing attribute information about the product (like fit, quality, and comfort) is also a good way to ensure quality UGC. For example, one Etsy reviewer detailed a specific challenge they faced during the time of purchase. Another shared an image of her red phone, so other customers with that same color phone could better visualize the case.

Attribute information can also be about the purchaser. For example, Le Col, a premium cycling gear company, tags the reviewer as a verified purchaser and shares their location, gender, and age range.

With this information, customers are able to discern if the product fits into their lifestyle and expectations.

“I also love to see attribute information,” says Schuman. “So if I’m buying skincare, I love knowing a bit about the reviewer’s skin type so I can look for reviews of folks with skin similar to mine.”

This kind of attribute information can go a long way toward humanizing your reviewers, which lends to their trustworthiness.

Employee advocacy

Brands should be upfront about content that comes from employees. But that doesn’t mean employee advocacy doesn’t have a place, especially in hype-building situations like a launch or a social initiative. Enabling your employees to participate and create their own UGC will boost trust as well as brand awareness. Especially on LinkedIn, Facebook, or Twitter.

Beauty brand Aura relied heavily on its employee advocacy program as part of its initial launch, and throughout the month of March to celebrate Women’s History Month.

“User-generated content helps us to be relatable as a brand,” said Vera Koch, Aura VP of Global Marketing. “It helps boost credibility that this is not polished on Photoshop.”

Ask for what you want

Content moderation can be really simple. You don’t have to sit around hoping that a customer will create UGC that aligns with your brand’s style and tone. You can just ask for it. Tell users what sort of UGC you’d like to see from them by specifying any rules, regulations, or visual standards you want. No one wants to see a blurry photo on the landing page for your brand, so selecting and moderating UGC that looks great as well as provides value is essential.

Brands should also announce the branded hashtags that fans should use to tag their UGC, as global fashion brand Quiz did.

To increase its social media reach, Quiz asks followers and fans to share images of themselves in Quiz clothing using #QUIZQUEEN and #SEENINQUIZ. They also ask permission before using UGC, which is usually granted.

Make an event

Making events through a variety of social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram is yet another way to drive quality engagement. Contests and events incentivize higher-quality content, like gorgeous, inspiring photos. They also provide opportunities for both employees and customers to create quality UGC before, during, and after the event.

For example, your brand might run an awards show like GoPro does. The brand promotes daily photo challenges and inspires customers’ creativity.

Apologize when things go wrong

Obviously, the internet moves fast, and it’s not always possible for brands to filter out toxic content before it’s exposed to their community members. But when things go wrong — whether it’s your own branding error or trolling Tweets — definitely apologize. Publicly!

Burger King U.K. went through this in March 2021 with their “Women belong in the kitchen” tweet. Following 12 hours of backlash, the brand issued a public apology.

Burger King’s gaffe also created the need to moderate toxic content. Abusive replies were made against Burger King critics in the Twitter thread, which the CMO for Burger King’s parent company, Restaurant Brands International, acknowledged and promised to remove.

Make UGC content moderation easier

So, we’ve explored what quality UGC is and why UGC moderation is so important. We’ve also explored various tactics brands can take to get the most out of UGC. Now all that’s left is to actually start doing it!

Read our how-to audit your UGC article to learn more. Or catch our on-demand webinar version below, if that’s more your thing.

Check out the rest of our Long Read content here for more UGC best-practices.

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The audit your UGC program needs

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In a world of fake news and misleading social media posts, it’s easy to look at online content and assume nefarious origins. It’s up to our moderation team to make sure that we’re transparent with consumers about what we’re doing, so that they can feel like they can trust the content that they see on brands’ and retailers’ product pages. At the same time, the reality is there are nefarious players out there, so it’s crucial to also build processes that weed out any fraudulent content or posters.

As part of our trust and privacy blog series, we interviewed Abi Schuman, the Senior Director of Content Management Services. She oversees our moderation team and helps to regularly innovate on our moderation processes and standards. Here’s what she had to say: 

Can you walk us through Bazaarvoice’s moderation processes?

“At Bazaarvoice, content moderation can be done by a machine, a human, or a combination of both. Even our machines are constantly learning and being reviewed by humans to make them better. Our process is ever-evolving and has pretty high quality standards. A statistically significant portion of every client’s content gets moderated a second time for quality purposes.

When a consumer is submitting content, like a product review, they’re typically going to see some terms and conditions that give them some guidance around what’s important to talk about and maybe some topics they shouldn’t talk about.

In the moderation process, there are a few things we look for – does it appear to be a real review? Is it on the right product? Is the reviewer staying on topic? A common reason a review may be rejected, for example, is if someone buys a product, but the entire review is about the person at the store that was rude to them. That’s a perfectly valid complaint, but that doesn’t help another consumer decide whether or not that specific product is useful to them.

It’s important to note that we’re sentiment neutral. The decision about what content does or doesn’t appear, doesn’t have anything to do with whether the content is positive or negative. So in that example I just used about customer service, even if the review said they just thought the person at the store was the nicest person they’ve ever interacted with, that review would still get rejected, because if the product is a blow dryer, that does not tell me anything about whether or not that blow dryer is going to be useful to me.”

         Our authenticity process is separate from moderation, and you can learn more about that here.

How does Bazaarvoice handle moderation and authenticity processes?

“The processes happen in tandem. When content comes in, it goes into a stream to be moderated, because we want to be really quick about getting it to display. Authenticity can sometimes take a little bit longer, and it’s cumulative.

Moderation and authenticity are two technically separate processes, but they’re typically happening in the same timeframe.”

What is the split of computer moderation versus human moderation at Bazaarvoice?

“About 70% of our content gets auto-moderated by machines, that’s up from about 20% two years ago. This leaves 30% that’s moderated by humans. And that’s because the science is getting better. We have a team that’s been working very, very hard to get there. Like I said, even when humans are moderating, we’re approving nearly everything. Most reviews really are, “This lamp is great. It said that it was great for desks and movable, and it fulfilled all those purposes.”The machine’s looking for key terminology, key themes around customer service or shipping complaints or liability issues, or defamation or offensive key terms. The great thing about machine learning and having that upfront is that it’s faster than humans. If you’re somebody trying to make a decision, we’re getting reviews out there quickly by making that quick assessment using the machines.

The types of content that will always go to a human for moderation is anything in a highly regulated industry such as pharmaceuticals or anything that requires Adverse Events reporting. All of that by default goes to a human along with a statistically significant portion of each individual client’s data set. We also moderate in close to 40 languages, and so we work to cover those as well with humans and unique models.” 

How does Bazaarvoice train moderators to make sure they meet our standards?

“That was actually my first job at Bazaarvoice 12 years ago, building training curriculum for new moderators. We’ve come a long way. Moderators go through a series of web-based trainings and take 4 initial exams.

When a moderator starts moderating, 100% of their content’s reviewed by a second tenured moderator. When the second moderator reviews it, they leave notes with feedback for the first moderator. The first moderator, the new one, can see all of those notes, so it’s allowing them to adapt their training logic.

Over time, we gradually reduce the quantity of work being reviewed by a second moderator as we see new moderators build up their skills. There’s a combination of upfront training, and there are also weekly individual coaching sessions based on specific work and what we’re seeing that specific moderator having a harder time with.”

What makes Bazaarvoice’s moderation process stand out among ratings and review providers?

“First, I think languages are a big differentiator for us – we moderate in a lot of languages. This allows a lot of our global brands to offer consistent experiences across their sites.

Second, is experience. In a fairly new industry, there’s really no one that’s been doing it longer than we’ve been doing it. I was able to sit on the group that wrote the international standard on moderation online authenticity with the ISO. I’ve been at Bazaarvoice for 12 years, and Liz Jury, our manager of client services operations, has been here for 13 years. That level of expertise helps us to define best practices for our clients and their industries, as well as react quickly to the various day to day things that can arise and become present in reviews in response to a product or brand being in the media for example..

Third, is our moderators. A lot of them are folks who quite honestly have had our jobs before, they’ve just gotten to a point in their life where they need more flexibility in their careers. Some of them are retired or raising their families, and it gives them an opportunity to work by balancing out their life, and so it allows us to get a really educated, dedicated workforce.

Finally, we’re able to build thorough learning algorithms because of the quantity of data we have access to from our clients.”

Where do you see Bazaarvoice’s moderation process and policies heading in the future?

“I think that the big future for us is going to be around visual [content]. While we definitely moderate visual content today, we don’t do a whole lot of syndicating for visual content. I think with our acquisition of Curalate, you’re going to see a lot more brands sharing their visual content with retailers.

I think the big future thing for Bazaarvoice will really be around duplicating and building these processes for visual content.

Additionally, I think it’ll be an interesting path around moderation of social content. We do a little bit of that today, but with the acquisition of Influenster, often times when people are sampling products, they’re not only leaving reviews, but they’re leaving social content too. In all of these circumstances, we are really evaluating content as is and it is important to us that in the future, as with all types of content, we moderate, but never edit content, to make sure we are putting out the most on topic, helpful, appropriate content for consumers to help drive purchasing decisions.”

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Want to to learn more about how Bazaarvoice helps our clients  enhance their user-generated content programs? Connect with us here.

We do this by giving individual consumers a voice in the enormous universe of e-commerce. By enabling shoppers to rate, review, and post photos and videos of products they have purchased, we help them connect with brands and retailers and provide feedback about their experiences for other consumers. This influential consumer-generated content is often displayed on our clients’ own websites but can also be distributed to other retailer websites where their products are sold, reaching more consumers and multiplying the impact.

In 2005, we started this business with our core Ratings & Reviews offering. A solution for brands to distribute this content to retailers, then called SyndicateVoice, soon followed as our second product. We then incorporated other forms of CGC like photos, videos, and questions and answers. Since then, we’ve built the Bazaarvoice Network one valuable connection at a time — brands to retailers, retailers to consumers, and consumers to the products they love. We’ve invested in the technologies, tools, and processes to create the world’s largest shopping network, all with an unwavering commitment to delivering the very best shopping experience.

Today, we are very pleased to open the Bazaarvoice Network to all brands. Now, brands of any size, regardless of their CGC provider, can display content across our global network of over 1,000 retailers and have the opportunity to reach over a billion shoppers each month.

Syndication to the Bazaarvoice Network enables brands to:

Expand your reach

When it comes to CGC, scale matters. Wherever you sell your products, you should have ratings and reviews from customers available for other shoppers to view. Through syndication, any content you collect can be shared to a variety of retailers, helping you to reach consumers in places you otherwise wouldn’t have.

Each month, we manage content for over 140 million products and syndicate more than 750,000 pieces of content. We connect consumers to products at an unrivaled scale. Our clients include the world’s top retailers, representing two-thirds of the IR100 in North America and nearly half of the IR100 in Europe — the nearest competitor’s network is one-tenth of our size.^*

Foster brand trust

Consumer trust in review content is foundational to its value. If you’re going to syndicate your ratings and reviews, it is critical to be certain that your content is authentic and free from fraud and edits. We have sophisticated product matching and moderation to ensure that your content ends up displaying on the right product, at the right retailer, and that it meets quality and authenticity standards. On average, we moderate 4.6 million reviews within 72 hours of submission and prevent publication of more than 100,000 fraudulent reviews a month. The end result is that consumers get trustworthy content wherever they shop and that fosters trust in your brand.

Increase sales

Consumers who interact with CGC convert twice as often as those who don’t. Last year, our best-in-class clients saw a 19% site-wide revenue lift and a 119% revenue per visitor lift from shoppers who engaged with CGC.

With syndication, you can put this influential content in more places, in front of more shoppers. On average, brands that distribute content to retail partners see 76% more reviews per product and 36% more product coverage than if they had relied on native coverage. By distributing your ratings and reviews, your brand can increase sales and stay ahead of competition in your space.

Establish relationships with retailers

For brands that sell their products at retailers, navigating the world of channel sales can be challenging. In the retail world, the merchant is an important gatekeeper and stakeholder when it comes to a brand’s success. Merchants are extremely motivated to drive sales for their products. In addition to all of the consumer-facing benefits, having a review syndication strategy helps you build credibility with retailers. Syndication helps retailers collect more content that directly impacts sales. Showing your retail partners that you care about their business and their customers goes a long way.

Ratings and reviews syndication is a clear opportunity for brands that sell products at retailers. Content appears in more places, is seen by more shoppers, and influences more sales. Brands can put their best foot forward.

At the same time, retailers gain high quality, authentic content that drives SEO, sales, and engagement value, all without having to invest in their own infrastructure to gather, aggregate, and match content from the brands they sell.

Most importantly, consumers get authentic product content wherever they shop, and they know where that content comes from. This fosters connection to the brand, trust in the retailer, and confidence to buy.

We’re excited to offer more brands, retailers, and shoppers the opportunity to connect. Talk to us to learn more about syndication in the Bazaarvoice Network. More than a billion shoppers are waiting.

*Based on analysis of traffic among members of the IR500

When it comes to customer reviews for your products, there is a lot of money on the line. Great reviews sell more products, bad reviews block purchases, and the absence of reviews raises concern. Because of this, some brands, like those in the news recently, will go to great, and illicit, lengths to purchase or fabricate positive reviews for their products.

As a CGC partner for thousands of brands and retailers, we help more than 700 million consumers view and share authentic opinions, questions, and experiences about tens of millions of products each month. It is our role to ensure that brands can authentically connect to their customers and that consumers have authentic content to inform their purchases.

With ever more ways for consumers to discover, research, and purchase products and services, it is imperative that they find content they can trust. As CGC has grown in importance, efforts to manipulate the system have grown in sophistication. Here are our three golden rules for ensuring authentic consumer-generated content.

Golden Rule #1: Do not allow fake content.

According to Nielsen, almost all consumers (92%) trust consumer-generated content more than traditional advertising and marketing. Consumers have a right to trust the CGC they encounter, and, moreover, businesses have a responsibility to ensure this content is legitimate. Fake reviews can over inflate and damage brands and trick consumers.

Companies should be aware of the possibility of fraudulent content through a variety of means, including disruptive or trolling activity, commercial messages, automated submissions (e.g. bots, programs, and scripts), illegitimate or degrading content by a competitor, and self-promotion by employees.

At Bazaarvoice, we analyze several factors of the entire review process to prevent fake reviews from being published. As part of our moderation and fraud detection processes, we don’t only look at the written review content itself, but the submission process as a whole.

Our moderators look out for certain words and language patterns in written reviews to determine authenticity, and our team also looks at the data associated with the submission. This includes, but is not limited to, submission velocity, geographic analysis, and consumer characteristics. Our moderation and fraud detection teams conduct pattern and data analysis on each specific submission against common behaviors across our entire network to identify reviews submitted abnormally.

Having both textual moderation and data driven anti-fraud processes in place helps us to ensure that all consumer-generated content comes from legitimate consumers.

Golden Rule #2: Don’t screen out negative content — find value in it.

We are firm believers that instead of trying to suppress negative comments, companies and business owners should embrace them.

Customers are used to seeing a mix of positive and negative reviews and have come to expect both when making their purchase decisions. They don’t scare away easily from a few bad reviews, so companies should think twice before deciding to remove or hide negative comments on their websites. In fact, it can be the opposite. We see products that have one or more negative reviews have higher conversion rates than those that have a perfect five-star rating and zero negative reviews.

When products or services have an abundance of overly positive reviews, consumers tend to assume that the content is fake or that negative content has been moderated out. In that scenario, suppressing negative content or providing fake reviews can actually backfire and damage a customer or retailer relationship.

In addition to giving consumers a true feel for a product or service, negative reviews are an opportunity for engaging with consumers and identifying potential product improvements. Brands who respond to and take action on negative feedback will build trust with their customers and improve future products.

Responding to negative reviews gives us the chance to shift the way the customer feels toward us based on the way we handle their concerns. They might still share their negative experience about a product or service, but they also immediately follow with how they will always buy from us because of how well we handled the issue. We respond to reviews to get involved in a conversation with our customers.

Bonnie BerrioCustomer Service Specialist, Boots Retail

We started seeing a trend of customers saying in reviews that they wished our shoe boxes were taller, so they could use them to store high-heeled shoes upright. As a direct result of customer-review feedback, we started offering a tall shoe box, and it’s been a major hit from the get-go by every metric imaginable.

Patrick BurkCustomer Content Manager, The Container Store

All reviews, negative and positive, have an important place in the online shopping experience; the entire marketplace benefits from exchanging honest feedback, and this environment should be safeguarded and protected.

Golden Rule #3: Be transparent about how you collect reviews.

There are a variety of ways that a business can ask customers to provide a review, including verbally at time of purchase, through post-interaction emails, or in a social media campaign. Regardless of how a review is collected, brands should never ask for or incentivize positive reviews. Consumers should always feel empowered to provide their honest feedback.

If consumers are offered money or promotional material (such as discounts or coupons) in exchange for providing an unbiased review, then the review should explicitly indicate this. We recommend adding descriptors to like,”This reviewer received free product in exchange for their honest feedback,” to any reviews that were collected using a promotion.

In an effort to show consumers when CGC is authentic and protected through a neutral third party, we created the Authentic Reviews Trust Mark, which many of our clients display on their product pages. When consumers see the Trust Mark, they can rest assured that the content is free from fraud, spam, edits, and alteration and sourced in a way that ensures unbiased feedback.

As technology advances, so do ways to fake consumer-generated content and falsely inflate products. At Bazaarvoice, we continue to prioritize the protection of authentic content. To better understand how we prevent fake reviews, read more about our Trust Mark and Authenticity Policy.