Most clipping agencies don’t put a price on their site. We do, because the math is simple and you should be able to check it.
A clipping campaign has two costs: the budget that pays clippers for views, and the fee that pays us to run it. Here’s how both work, what a dollar of budget actually buys, and what to ask any agency before you pay. New to clipping? Start with What Is a Clipping Agency?
What you pay
Every campaign has a budget, and all of it goes to clippers. We don’t take a cut of it. Our management fee is 30%, added on top.
So a $3,000 budget is a $3,900 invoice. The $3,000 is paid out to clippers for verified views. The $900 covers the work around it: the brief, our clipper network, reviewing every clip, checking views for botting, paying clippers and reporting back to you.
We suggest a budget of at least $2,000. Below that, too few clippers join to give the idea a fair test. For a single song, most campaigns run $3,000 to $5,000. Apps, brands and film or TV launches usually start at $5,000 to $10,000, because they need more clippers across more formats.
What a dollar of budget buys
Clippers earn per 1,000 verified views, usually $1. At that rate, a $3,000 budget pays for 3 million views. In practice, campaigns end up with more than that, for two reasons.
The cap. Every campaign caps what one clip can earn. On our World Cup campaign, the cap was $200, which a clip reaches at 200,000 views. The top clip went on to 4.2 million, so about 4 million of its views cost nothing extra. The cap also stops one viral clip from eating the whole budget, so it keeps paying for hundreds of others.
Time. Clips stay up after the budget is paid out, and they keep getting found. The World Cup clips had 9.3 million views when the $4,000 budget ran out in early July, and 13.0 million by September 23, without another dollar spent.
That’s why we judge a campaign on the effective rate: budget divided by verified views. Across the 20 campaigns we’ve run since April, it has averaged $0.79 per 1,000. The World Cup campaign came in at $0.31, and AURORA’s “Runaway” at $0.27.
How fast the budget goes
Most campaigns go live about three days after the brief is set. From there, a budget can be paid out in three days or last a month, depending on how fast the clips take off. A clip only starts earning after 2,000 views, and views are checked for botting before any payout is final.
Cheap isn’t the same as good
A low cost per 1,000 views isn’t the goal on its own. Views from people who will never care about your song or product are cheap for a reason, and botted views are worth nothing at any price.
What makes views worth paying for is where they come from. Our briefs pick a lane where the content already fits, like football edits during the World Cup, so the views come from people already watching that kind of content. Clips that break the brief don’t get paid.
Clipping vs paid ads
It’s tempting to set a clipping rate next to a TikTok or Meta ads rate. They’re different tools. Paid ads give you targeting, retargeting and conversion tracking, and they stop the day the budget stops.
Clipping gives you real posts on real pages, with comments, shares and creates, that keep picking up views after the budget is gone. Use the rate to compare reach, not to decide which one replaces the other.
What to ask any agency before you pay
Does all of the budget go to clippers? Ask what the fee is and whether it comes out of the budget or sits on top. Ours sits on top.
Is there a cap per clip? Without one, a single viral clip can take the whole budget.
How are views checked? Ask how botted views are caught before anyone is paid.
What’s your average, not your best? Any agency can quote its best campaign. Ask for the average across all of them.
What happens after the budget runs out? The clips should stay up and keep counting.
Can I see results while it runs? You should be able to watch views and approved clips come in, not wait for a report at the end. We share a live tracking link with every client.
What your budget should buy
Across all our campaigns, approved clips have passed 100 million verified views. Tell us your budget and what you’re launching, and we’ll tell you what it should buy.