Authentic Fan Videos Sell 5x Better Than Video Ads: The Data Behind UGC

What we talked about.

In this episode of the Sunny Ray show, host Sunny Ray talks with Ajay Bam, CEO and co-founder of Vyrill, about why authentic user generated videos convert up to five times better than traditional video ads. Bam explains that 95 percent of the world's video content is not searchable, even though 96 percent of Gen Z shoppers begin product discovery with video and 85 percent of global shoppers watch a video before purchasing. He describes how Vyrill indexes video across roughly twenty dimensions, covering audio, text, and imagery, to make user generated content searchable, moderated for brand safety, personalized, and measurable for retailers and TikTok Shop partners. Bam also traces his path from Lehman Brothers to a first startup exit, to launching Nokia's app store across dozens of countries, to teaching entrepreneurship at Berkeley Haas, and finally to founding Vyrill. He shares hard lessons on focus, company culture, mentorship, and the cultural nuance required when scaling commerce video globally, offering founders a candid look at what building for real, at scale, actually requires.

Vyrill's CEO explains why 95% of video is unsearchable and how authentic fan videos outsell polished ads five to one.

The questions, and the answers.

What are you building at Vyrill, what problem are you solving, and why should the listener care?

Ninety five percent of the world's video is not searchable, so it is not useful. Ninety six percent of Gen Z shoppers start product discovery with video, and eighty five percent of global shoppers watch a video before buying, yet most of that content never gets found. BMW spends twenty million dollars a year on video and only fifteen percent gets used. At Vyrill we index video in twenty dimensions so brands can make it searchable, moderated, personalized, and measurable.

You were teaching entrepreneurship at Haas. What did your students show you the industry was missing?

Teaching at Haas for three years, I watched my students scroll Instagram, YouTube, and eventually TikTok during and after every class. Video had become part of how they lived and talked to each other. When I asked brands what their biggest challenge was, they kept telling me it was video, how influential and hard to manage it had become. Seeing both sides come together, student behavior and brand pain, is what pushed me to start Vyrill.

Was there a single moment when you knew you were done lecturing?

It was not one moment, it was three years of consistent behavior. Every semester students were on their phones scrolling Instagram or YouTube, and once TikTok arrived they were completely hooked. TikTok proved that authenticity wins, the content is crazy, silly, and entertaining, and that emotional hook is what gets people attached. Combining what I saw with students and what I heard from brands about their challenges is what led me to start Vyrill.

What did your first company's acquisition teach you that you're doing differently at Vyrill?

The two things I missed at my first company were focus and culture. You cannot serve every vertical or every segment at once as a small startup, you have to win one thing and build from there. Culture matters even more, empowering your team to talk to customers and to each other without asking permission, and to challenge leadership respectfully. Ideas change and pivot, but people do not, so getting the right people and culture right is everything.

At Nokia you shipped a billion phones across 124 operators in 43 countries. What did that scale teach you about what startups get to ignore?

At Nokia I shipped a billion phones across a hundred twenty four operators in forty three countries, and that taught me scale has multiple dimensions, infrastructure, geography, language, and culture. A behavior that works in one country will not necessarily work in another, like what is acceptable in a swimwear video in western markets versus in Saudi Arabia. You get one chance to impress an enterprise customer, so you have to be ready before you scale, not after.

What's the one thing you taught founders for years that reality broke first when you became one again?

Focus, building an amazing culture, and mentorship are the things I had to relearn as a founder again. I now rely on three types of mentors, a personal mentor for both my personal and professional life, expert mentors who understand AI and data privacy, and company mentors who let employees give honest feedback about leadership without fear. Mentorship also helps employees grow their own careers, inside or outside of Vyrill.

You say 95% of video is untapped and brands waste most of their video dollars. Can you walk me through how you measure that?

Most video that gets surfaced in search results today is YouTube content, because Google owns YouTube and has permission to read it. Most of the world's video actually lives on people's phones or behind enterprise firewalls, where search engines have never had access to analyze it, for reasons of security, safety, and privacy. That is why the vast majority of video, even though brands are creating it, is never SEO'd or found.

How do you turn video content moderation and rights clearance into a product?

At Vyrill we analyze video in fifteen plus dimensions, including sentiment, topic, scene, demographic, brand safety, and product safety. For brand safety we check for nudity, profanity, minors, unlicensed music, and lighting, among other things. That indexing lets us both promote the right video and provide content moderation filters, so brands avoid a PR crisis. It is also why TikTok Shop partnered with us, because of our content moderation capabilities at scale.