Honestly, I think chasing a perfect ratio is a total red herring. What you really want is a floor - a minimum threshold that forces creative diversity so you're not just doubling down on one look when the algorithm shifts.
At my agency we're spinning up hundreds of ad variations a month, and when I look at spend it definitely feels UGC-heavy - but that's a dangerously simplified label. "UGC" on TikTok isn't the same beast as "UGC" on Instagram, and even within those walls you've got raw phone-footage, semi-polished studio-style, and everything between. They're different creative flavours with their own performance fingerprints.
For me it comes down to three things that actually matter:
Cost efficiency vs. ROI elasticity - If a £50 asset consistently lets you scale spend and return £200, great. But sometimes that shiny £500 production pulls £5,000 back, making the maths flip completely. You need to feel that tension.
Diminishing returns on volume - Are those extra UGC clips actually unlocking new spend, or are they just filling the creative queue? If the next 20 don't move the needle, you're just noise.
Concentration risk - The real killer. If 80% of your ad pool shares the same vibe, same face, same hook structure, and that vein runs dry, your account implodes overnight. Diversify creative style, message, even the personality behind the camera.
Meta is screaming at us that reaching new people means throwing lots of different visual textures into the machine. So I'd focus on how wide you can cast the net while still keeping the quality bar high and the creative pipeline moving - that's the brand's real edge.
