Glossary
The words, without the waffle
Plain definitions of the terms that come up in short-form video and AI UGC, each with what it is actually for and the thing people reliably get wrong about it.
Format
What a piece of content is, and who made it.
- Faceless videoFaceless video is short-form content made without a presenter on camera, using voiceover, screen content, stock or generated footage and on-screen text instead.
- Short-form videoShort-form video is vertical video of roughly fifteen to sixty seconds, made for feeds that autoplay and scroll: TikTok, Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts.
- UGCUGC stands for user-generated content: photos, videos and reviews made by customers and creators rather than by a brand's studio.
- UGC creatorA UGC creator is someone paid to make creator-style content for a brand to run on the brand's own channels, rather than to post it to their own audience.
Craft
The moving parts of putting one together.
- 9:16 aspect ratio9:16 is the vertical aspect ratio used by TikTok, Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts: nine units wide to sixteen tall, matching a phone held upright.
- AI avatarAn AI avatar is a generated person used as the presenter in a video, kept consistent across clips so a series looks like it features the same individual.
- B-rollB-roll is supplementary footage cut over the main shot: hands using a product, a street, a close-up of texture.
- HookThe hook is the opening of a short-form video, roughly the first one to three seconds, that decides whether someone keeps watching.
- Text to videoText to video is generating a video clip from a written description, rather than filming or editing one.
Metric
The numbers worth steering by, and the ones that mislead.
- Creative testingCreative testing is running several versions of the same idea to find out which one performs, rather than reasoning about it in advance.
- Hook rateHook rate is the share of people who kept watching past the first few seconds, usually measured at the three-second mark.
- RetentionRetention is how much of a video people actually watch, usually shown as a curve from the first second to the last.
Compliance
What the platforms now require, and how they check.
Knowing the words is the easy part
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