# Sebastian Novinsek

Sebastian Novinsek builds Influee, a platform for brands and agencies to find creators and produce user-generated content (UGC). Novinsek's work focuses on using creator content to test and scale paid social advertising.

- Profile: https://b2binfluencer.marketing/creators/sebastian-novinsek/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sebastian-novin
- LinkedIn followers: 4,718
- Topics: ecommerce, paid-ads, dtc-ecommerce, paid-social-advertising, creator-marketing
- Based on 16 dated posts, latest 2026-10-05

## Summary

Sebastian Novinsek is most useful for practical advice on UGC creative supply, hook testing, and paid-social operations.

- Best for: UGC platforms or agencies serving DTC brands needing strategic content collaboration on creative volume and operations.
- Not for: Consumer skincare or beverage brands seeking one creator for personal product reviews and trend-led TikTok sales.
- Check first: Ask for sponsor policy, rate card, minimum commitment, partnership inquiry route, and examples beyond Influee.

### Takeaways

- Test hook variations on one video body instead of buying a new concept for every variation.
- Cost per purchase, not default cost per engagement, is the relevant measure for sales testing.
- Manual UGC operations crack as client volume grows.

## Main ideas

- **UGC is a creative supply system, not a one-off content format**: Novinsek argues that the goal is not one perfect video but a system that keeps producing new creative and learning from it. More creators produce more scripts, more scripts produce more ads, and more ads mean faster testing and more chances to find a winner. They frame creators as a creative supply chain rather than a single content source, and cite unusually short creative lifespans as the reason a continuing pipeline matters.
- **Choose the UGC format for the campaign's job, not for the volume**: Novinsek argues that formats are not interchangeable because each does a different job for the brand. They map them across two dimensions — from brand building to performance, and from low to high production effort — and warn that brand-building-only content can be hard to connect to sales, while performance-only content risks making every ad feel like the same sales pitch.
- **Test hooks on one video instead of buying a new concept for every variation**: Novinsek rejects the widely repeated claim that Meta's Andromeda update killed hook testing. They say the Creative Testing Tool inside Ads Manager forces separate audience cohorts per variant, splits budget across the test set, and concentrates spend on the winner — capabilities the "20 concepts per cycle" advice assumed did not exist. They warn that the tool's default metric, cost per post engagement, proves nothing about conversion unless it is switched to cost per purchase, and argue the bad advice persists because "20 different concepts" sells twenty creator engagements while "2 bodies plus 10 hook variants" sells two. This sits in tension with their broader case for more creator supply: they distinguish testing hooks from commissioning additional concepts.
- **Manual UGC operations crack as client volume grows**: Novinsek describes agencies scaling UGC through Instagram direct messages, Google Docs, email, Slack, WhatsApp, and spreadsheets. They say the process works at low client counts, starts breaking around eight to ten clients, and then shows up as schedule slippage, unpredictable creator pricing, shrinking margins, and burnout. They argue agencies that survive treat UGC as a system rather than a collection of individual freelancer relationships. A related post ties the same problem to ad accounts: creative output has to keep pace with how fast media buyers exhaust new hooks.
- **Before scaling seasonal spend, work through an operational and financial checklist**: Novinsek shares a pre-Q4 checklist from Johnny Kam, described in the post as a creative strategist who has worked with 100+ eight- to ten-figure DTC brands. The checklist is split between operational safeguards and the financial questions that should decide whether spending more makes sense at all; Novinsek presents it as Kam's view, not their own finding.
- **Keep a portfolio of creator programs rather than a single play**: Novinsek argues that scaled brands tend to run several creator programs at once rather than one tactic. They group twelve recurring plays that they say appeared again and again across 100+ DTC brands, spanning paid partnership formats, ongoing creator relationships, commerce, customer content, and lifecycle use of UGC. A second post extends the same portfolio thinking to production, naming recurring production jobs that need their own tools.

## Work to read

- [“Andromeda killed hook testing for UGC”](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/sebastian-novinsek_andromeda-hook-testing-activity-7457448046142844929-RLrf)
- [Choosing UGC formats by campaign goal](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/sebastian-novin_one-agency-owner-told-me-our-clients-media-activity-7437451182912061440-zEpg)
- [When a UGC service outgrows manual processes](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/sebastian-novinsek_one-agency-owner-told-me-his-ugc-manager-activity-7454771848925384704-3Bdc)
- [Thrivin’s high-volume creative system](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/sebastian-novinsek_thrivin-went-from-250k-to-7m-in-monthly-activity-7510972943305273344-i3B8)
- [A Q4 readiness checklist for DTC brands](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/sebastian-novinsek_if-i-were-scaling-a-dtc-brand-in-q4-this-activity-7510247176103448576-zEta)

## Brand relationships

- **Influee** (employment)

## Partnerships

Novinsek's partnership offer runs through Influee, the platform they write about building for brands and agencies that need creators sourced and UGC produced. Before committing, ask for the sponsor policy, rate card, minimum commitment, and partnership inquiry route. The first conversation should settle the campaign goal, target markets, and content formats, which define the scope of sourcing and production.

## Alternatives

- Riley Cronin: Choose Riley Cronin over Novinsek when the campaign decision needs an operator who has built a brand-owned creator community as an ad creative supply chain. In the posts, Cronin describes recruiting 100+ creators a month, compensating creators with product, affiliate commissions, and a share of ad revenue, coaching submissions, and flighting the best organic videos as Partnership Ads. This is a closer match when the buyer wants a collaborator to explain performance-based creator communities, affiliate-funded content production, and using organic creator output as pre-spend testing. Cronin also brings a long-horizon, owner-level account of betting on creator communities, affiliate content, TikTok Shop, and live shopping — useful if the partnership angle is "creators are the funnel" rather than agency UGC production workflow. The tradeoff: Cronin's posts are stronger on community-building and live-commerce conviction than on the agency-facing production bottlenecks, pricing instability, and creative-volume checklists covered in Novinsek's posts. They offer less detail on platform or service delivery for agencies, and provide no rate card, audience data, or information about current commercial availability. If the buyer needs agency-owner education and operational UGC procurement, Novinsek is the closer choice; if the buyer needs brand-owned community strategy and performance creator recruitment, Cronin is stronger.
- Grace Eva: Choose Grace Eva over Novinsek when the campaign decision is about AI-assisted UGC production rather than human creator sourcing. The posts explain how to create UGC-style ads without a creator or camera: AI avatars, scripts, voiceovers, product demos, B-roll, captions, and multiple ad variations for testing. That is useful for a UGC platform or agency that needs to produce more creative variations faster with AI, or reduce production barriers while testing more hooks and angles. Grace Eva's material also surveys AI tools for avatar and spokesperson video, UGC generators, product-to-video platforms, script and voiceover tools, and scaling and testing workflows — a better fit when the buyer wants a collaborator to educate on AI UGC tooling and workflows. The tradeoff: these are guides and tool-oriented promotions, not information about running a creator community, sourcing creators, negotiating rates, or managing agency UGC operations. Buyers seeking agency-owner perspectives on pricing instability, creator shortlist scoring, or multilingual production should ask for examples. If the buyer's promise is more creators, more scripts, and more ads, Novinsek is closer; if the promise is more AI-generated ad variants without human creators, Grace Eva is closer.
- Ujla Shakoor: Choose Ujla Shakoor over Novinsek when the campaign decision needs a DTC media-buyer perspective on creative pipeline management. The posts frame the risk of building an ad account around one creative — one hook, one angle, one message — and argue for always testing the next winner across hooks, angles, customer problems, and formats. That is a good match for a UGC platform or agency that wants a collaborator to speak to media buyers about avoiding creative dependency, reading CPA and ROAS declines, and keeping a pipeline of winners in test. The personal pause post also gives a career-reflection angle that could support a "why we build systems, not one-off ads" narrative. The tradeoff: the posts give the narrowest picture for the buyer's UGC-partner decision. They cover paid-social testing and media buying, not creator sourcing, community building, UGC production, rights, localization, or agency operations. If the buyer needs a full creative-supply system across creator recruitment and production, Novinsek is the stronger subject; if the buyer needs a media-buyer voice on testing and account risk, Ujla Shakoor is a plausible alternative.

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AI-assisted summary of public posts. Audience demographics are not available. Engagement appears only where we checked recent posts. Method: https://b2binfluencer.marketing/methodology/