What a clipping campaign costs
Clipping is bought by the view. You set a budget, we set a rate per 1,000 views, and the budget pays out against that rate until it runs out. Nothing here is a quote, but the ranges are the ones we work inside.
The rate per 1,000 views
The rate depends on how much work a clip takes and how much the clip is worth to you. Logo campaigns ask the least of an editor and pay the least. Brand campaigns ask for your footage to be cut properly and pay the most.
| Campaign type | Rate per 1,000 views | What the editor does |
|---|---|---|
| Logo | $0.30 to $0.50 | Puts your logo on clips they make themselves. |
| Music | $0.50 to $1.00 | Puts your track under edits they make themselves. |
| Brand | $0.50 to $3.00 | Cuts your footage into clips. The rate moves with your niche and how much there is to work with. |
Why you usually pay less than the rate
The rate is what a view costs while the budget is paying for it. It isn’t what the campaign ends up costing per 1,000 views, and the gap is often large.
Every campaign caps how much any one editor can earn. Once a clip hits that cap it stops drawing from the budget, but it doesn’t stop being watched. Those views keep arriving and you aren’t charged for them. A clip that runs long past its cap can drag the real cost per 1,000 views well below the rate you agreed to.
The cap is there for a second reason. Without one, a single viral clip can swallow a whole budget in a day, and you end up with one big number instead of a spread of posts across a lot of accounts.
Our management fee
25% of the budget, charged on top of it. A $5,000 budget means $5,000 to the editors and $1,250 to us, so $6,250 in total. The fee covers writing the brief, setting the rate and the cap, reviewing every submission before it’s paid, and the report at the end.
On a first campaign the fee is only due if we deliver. Clear a million views inside 90 days and the 25% is payable. Fall short and it’s nothing, and you keep every view the campaign brought in. There’s more on how that works in what a clipping agency is.
A worked example
Say you run a brand campaign at a $1.00 rate on a $5,000 budget.
- The budget buys 5,000,000 paid views. That’s arithmetic, not a forecast. It’s what $5,000 covers if every view is charged at the rate.
- Our fee is $1,250, so $6,250 leaves your account. On a first campaign that $1,250 is only due if the campaign clears a million views in 90 days.
- The real total is higher than 5,000,000. Clips that pass their payout cap keep running and keep being watched, and you aren’t billed for any of it. How much higher depends on how many clips go long, which nobody can tell you in advance.
That last line is the whole reason the rate and the cost per 1,000 views aren’t the same number.
The minimum
Budgets start at $3,000. Below that there isn’t enough in the pot to interest enough editors, and a campaign that only a handful of people claim is a campaign that tells you nothing.
How that compares with buying ads
Paid social is sold by the impression. US CPMs sit around $7.03 on TikTok and $12.53 on Meta, on EMARKETER’s estimates for Q1 2025. Clipping rates start below a dollar, though the two aren’t the same product and the comparison only goes so far. We put the differences side by side in clipping compared with running ads.
What to ask any clipping agency
Including us. These are the questions that separate a priced service from a vague one.
- Is your fee on top of the budget or taken out of it? A 25% fee inside the budget means 25% fewer views bought. On top means the editors get the whole budget.
- What’s the payout cap per editor? No cap means one clip can take the lot.
- Who reviews submissions, and against what? If nobody checks how the views grew, you’re paying for bots eventually.
- What happens to clips after the budget runs out? They should stay up, and those views should cost you nothing.
- What does the report include when it goes badly? A report with no weak spots is an ad.
What you can’t know in advance
Anyone quoting you a guaranteed view count off a budget is guessing. Delivery swings with your niche, your footage, the rate and how many editors pick the campaign up. What we’ll put in writing before anything goes live is a floor, not a forecast, and the floor is deliberately set below what a campaign that size would usually do.
You can size up a budget against a rough benchmark, as long as you read it as a planning number rather than a promise.
Want the numbers for your campaign?
Tell us what you’re promoting and what you can spend, and you’ll get the rate, the cap and the floor in writing.
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