The vast majority of brands working with creators have experienced the difficulty of maintaining consistent, high-quality content relationships at scale. The standard industry solution has been to treat creators as interchangeable and disposable, focusing on metrics while ignoring the human dynamics that drive sustainable content production.

Kovalee took a different path—treating creators as people, not assets.

Albonnie Robertson, GTM Lead at Kovalee, who built their creator platform from scratch, emphasizes this distinction. “What’s surprising is the level of care it takes. It’s not just a numbers game,” she explains. “It is a human industry. They are not transactional like assets; they are people. And I think that’s important to remember.”

Instead of continuing to source user-generated content (UGC) through external platforms like Fiverr—which Albonnie realized “is scalable if you have one app or two apps, but if you’re a publisher with 20, 30, 40, 100 apps, then it’s not scalable”—Kovalee decided to build its own creator community.

Starting with just 25 creators managed through Google Drive folders, Albonnie has built Kovalee Kreators into a community of over 3,000 active content producers who deliver hundreds of pieces of content weekly for its portfolio of consumer apps, specializing in health and fitness, productivity and education.

“We have opened a Slack channel where we share a bunch of things. The creators are engaged with each other. They help each other with various things. Sometimes they film projects with each other or they talk to one another,” Albonnie shares.

This community-building approach has translated into creator retention. “We have creators that we’ve worked with now for two years, and they’re still actively producing lots of content for us,” Albonnie notes. In an industry with high creator churn, this longevity provides Kovalee with continuity and institutional knowledge.

By structuring their entire UGC operation around community rather than transactions, they’ve created what Albonnie calls “a powerhouse within the company and probably one of the most strategic functions we have.”

Founded as an app publisher that works exclusively with app developers through profit-sharing partnerships, Kovalee has grown apps like Bend from fewer than 1,000 users to 10 million, generating upwards of $1 million in monthly revenue.

The Value Beyond the Transaction

While many platforms focus exclusively on content output, Kovalee invests significantly in creator development. “We provide extensive feedback on revisions or rejections,” Albonnie explains. “We’re working on integrating an even quicker way to do this into our platform. Plus, we provide guides based on every app and also just best practices.”

This investment in creator growth creates a virtuous cycle. As creators develop their skills, they influence the creative direction rather than simply executing briefs. “Creators are being able to dictate more how they, from their upskilling, they’re able to dictate how a brief should look, how the voice should be said, how a hook should be positioned, and they’re kind of feeding learnings into us,” Albonnie observes.

As she shares, the result is a collaborative ecosystem where insights flow bidirectionally between Kovalee and its creators, generating content that performs better for their apps.

Authenticity as Performance Driver

At the heart of Kovalee’s approach is a recognition that authenticity directly impacts performance. Albonnie distinguishes between genuine UGC and what often masquerades as it in today’s market:

“People are slapping the UGC bumper sticker on high-stakes, high-value influencers, and that’s not really what it is. UGC is the rough and ready content that may have a mistake in the caption that you see. It’s a real person, it’s not hyper polished.”

This authentic appeal isn’t just a matter of aesthetic preference—it delivers results. “People want to see real people use the apps and people want to feel a connection,” Albonnie explains. “If it is a display ad, it’s not going to work, and you’re not going to feel a level of trust, you’re not going to relate to the ad.”

For creators themselves, Albonnie advises that a genuine connection to the product is essential: “If you’re feeling forced to create an ad for a company that maybe you don’t adhere to just because you want to get paid, the ad I don’t think will work. You need to pick the apps, brands, or products you adhere to.”

The Data Behind the Human Touch

Kovalee’s people-first approach doesn’t mean they’ve abandoned data. Far from it—they’ve developed sophisticated tools to measure performance, including an internal system where UA managers (User Acquisition) are able to test creatives at scale across various networks, namely Meta and TikTok, to make informed decisions, before launching creatives into the main campaigns.

What’s distinctive is how they combine human insight with data analytics. “It’s data plus the human mind still,” Albonnie explains. This hybrid approach enables them to identify where content is underperforming and make targeted improvements.

According to Albonnie, the company’s success comes not from any single brilliant creator or ad, but from its ability to continuously refresh content through its diverse creator network. “Creative fatigue is the blocker,” Albonnie notes. “By having this pool of creators that are high performing and can also change on their revisions and also learn and grow because of our efforts to nurture them, we’re seeing that we’re able to fuel this machine with so many creatives that we’re able to be out of creative fatigue on our apps constantly.”

What’s Next for Human-Centered Creator Partnerships?

As the industry matures, Albonnie sees Kovalee’s human-centered approach as the future. She observes a pattern where successful UGC creators “grow in attraction. They become influencers, and then that’s one trend. And then they become consultants of UGC, and then there’s the next wave.”

This perspective recognizes creators not as disposable content producers but as developing professionals with their own career trajectories.

Kovalee plans to double down on its human-centered approach while continuing to refine its technology. “We’re building more guides for them, building more features, developing our internal tech, building on the platform that we have for the creators with their feedback in mind as well,” Albonnie explains.

For Albonnie personally, building Kovalee Creators has been deeply fulfilling: “I feel proud to have had this project to myself and from having it take it from nothing to be like a powerhouse within the company and probably one of the most strategic functions that we have.”

She concludes with a sentiment that encapsulates Kovalee’s philosophy: “I’m super thankful for all the creators that are part of the program. They’re obviously the ones fueling all this success, and they should also be thanked for that.”