Here’s some inspiring news for low-budget filmmakers and cash-strapped brands looking to get noticed. A new effectiveness study of online video shows that user-generated videos are in many ways as effective as slickly produced TV commercials, news that would hardly surprise your typical YouTube addict. Could this spell the end of the expensive commercial shoot?

Maybe it’s too early to boot the creative team, but the findings of the study do suggest that marketers have been underestimating the persuasive power of user-generated video. Says Frank Findley, Vice President of comScore ARS, one of the co-authors of the study: “The results of our research suggest that user-created video is a format that not only yields promising persuasive executions, but does so in a way that complements traditional forms of media. When advertisers think of user-generated content, they mostly consider the impact of creative going viral.”

In other words, here’s a strong retort for those moments when the brand manager asks of the agency: “can you make me a viral?” Instead, it turns out, offering your customers a superior product and a compelling narrative has the potential to be even more persuasive than a handsome man on a horse.

We should point out that the co-author of this report is EXPO Communications, a video production outfit that helps brands produce product reviews. In other words, they know quite a bit about effective product reviews.

One of their clients had this to say about the findings of the study:

“It’s no surprise that consumers can persuade each other, but it is surprising that in consumer-produced video, people are naturally exhibiting behaviors that years of research have found to be persuasive in professional television commercials,” said Joe Torpey, Director, Digital Marketing for LG Electronics USA, Inc. “Brands are only beginning to uncover the value that lies in giving consumers their own voice on the social web.”