Amazon Ads’ approach to user-generated content: Protecting advertisers while preserving reach

Some of the internet's most engaged audiences are built around user-generated content (UGC). These environments foster real conversations and genuine connections at scale. For advertisers, that's a significant opportunity to reach highly engaged consumers in moments of authentic interaction.

But the unfiltered nature of UGC means ads can end up adjacent to conversations and material that may not align with a brand’s messaging. Without proper policies and moderation around UGC, the risk to advertisers is real.

What is UGC, and why does it require special attention?

UGC is any content created by individuals rather than professional publishers or editorial teams—found across a wide range of environments, including forums, personal blogs, social media and video platforms, and creative communities.

Not all of these categories carry the same risks. Every UGC platform operates under its own content policies that define what is and isn’t allowed, and publishers are responsible for setting those standards and enforcing them. A well-moderated review site is fundamentally different from a loosely moderated community forum. For advertisers, that difference matters.

How Amazon Ads approaches UGC

We qualify UGC supply and make it available to advertisers where moderation standards meet our requirements, and we limit or remove exposure where they don’t. This is not a site- or app-level decision. We evaluate at the content and section level within a single property, combining advanced automated detection with ongoing human review of publisher moderation practices.

Given the scale of UGC across the open internet, we use advanced AI-based detection to evaluate both text and visual content across 40+ million pages daily, classifying UGC across 20 distinct sub-types, each carrying different levels of inherent risk.¹ The system is designed to assess moderation strength and consistency over time, and flag emerging risks across all supply. From there, our team conducts human evaluation, auditing individual publishers and monitoring their moderation policies and enforcement. The same property can look very different across sections and over time, so this evaluation never stops.

In practice, UGC platforms can contain both high-quality and brand-unsafe content at the same time. A blanket approach fails advertisers either way. Blocking all UGC sacrifices valuable audience reach. Accepting it uncritically sacrifices brand safety. We don't think advertisers should have to choose. For instance, a gaming property may host gaming content, gameplay tutorials, and streams alongside user forums. Our system evaluates each section of the site independently—serving ads alongside the gaming content, while limiting exposure in any loosely moderated user forums. This gives advertisers access to highly engaged audiences without compromising brand safety.

UGC brand safety is an industry-wide challenge. We also work closely with independent supply quality partners, like Jounce Media, to evaluate our approach, collectively minimize supply-side risks, and continuously raise the industry standard. Jounce partners with Amazon Ads on supply quality enforcement, and both teams have shared learnings on UGC detection.

"Having reviewed Amazon's approach with their brand safety team, I can say few partners have invested as meaningfully in understanding the true risk profile of UGC at scale," said Chris Kane, Founder of Jounce Media. "The combination of granular classification with active human evaluation sets the bar for what responsible UGC monetization should look like across the industry."

Our moderation standard for publishers

The quality of a UGC environment comes down to how seriously a publisher takes both their content policies and moderation practices. Publishers who get this right build inventory that earns lasting advertiser confidence and long-term demand.

That means:

• Maintaining clear community guidelines that explicitly prohibit inappropriate content, and ensuring those standards are visibly enforced
• Investing in proactive moderation that gets ahead of harmful content rather than reacting to it
• Being transparent about enforcement practices, removal rates, and response times
• Separating high-risk sections from ad-eligible inventory

These aren't point-in-time checks. Our evaluation combines page-level classification with publisher analysis tracked over time, measuring how consistently a publisher enforces their policies across weeks and months. A site that passes moderation review today but degrades in the future will see its qualification adjusted accordingly.

Built-in protection, by default

None of this requires action or added cost from advertisers. Amazon Ads’ UGC evaluation is designed to run across all supply by default, assessing risk and adjusting exposure in real time. When issues are identified, whether through our own systems or partner signals, affected supply is removed from eligibility and the root cause is incorporated into detection systems to prevent recurrence.

UGC environments, when properly moderated, represent some of the most engaged audiences on the internet. Our commitment to helping advertisers access that value safely means ongoing investment in the people, technology, and processes that keep this evaluation effective.

Sources

¹ Amazon internal, 2026.