Clipping campaigns for podcasts

Podcasts produce more usable material per hour than almost anything else, and almost none of it gets seen twice. A clipping campaign pays independent editors to cut your episodes into short vertical clips and post them from their own accounts, priced on the views those clips bring in.

Why podcasts clip well

A single hour-long episode holds a dozen moments that work on their own, whether that’s an argument, an admission, a story or a number that sounds wrong. An editor only has to find one and cut tightly around it.

You also aren’t asking anyone to make something new. The material already exists, it’s already been paid for, and most of it has been watched once by the people who were going to watch it. Clipping is what gets the rest of it in front of people who’ve never heard of the show.

What a podcast campaign costs

Podcast campaigns are priced as brand campaigns, because editors are cutting your footage rather than making their own. That band runs $0.50 to $3.00 per 1,000 views, and where you land inside it depends on your niche and how much material there is to work with.

Our management fee is 25% of the budget on top, and on a first campaign that fee is only due if the campaign clears a million views in 90 days. The full breakdown is in what a campaign costs.

One thing worth understanding before you plan around a number is that the rate isn’t what you end up paying per 1,000 views. Every editor has a payout cap, and clips that pass theirs keep running without charging you. The effective cost usually lands under the rate.

What you supply

• The episodes, or a drive of them. More back catalogue is better, not worse.
• Written permission to use the footage, including any guest whose consent you need.
• Anything off limits, whether that’s a guest, a segment, a sponsor read or a take you’d rather not see spread.
• Where you want people to end up, so the brief can point clips at the show rather than nowhere.

What the brief controls

The brief decides whether a campaign produces clips you’d have posted yourself or clips you’d quietly delete. For a podcast it usually sets which episodes are in play, a minimum and maximum clip length, whether captions are required, how the show has to be credited, and what gets a clip rejected. Every submission is reviewed against it before any money moves.

Where podcast campaigns go wrong

• Only the newest episode is allowed. You’ve cut the material down to a fraction of what’s there and editors move on to a campaign with more to pick from.
• The guest wasn’t cleared. Work stops the moment someone objects, and it’s avoidable.
• The brief demands the brand name in every caption. Clips that read as promotion get scrolled past, and you pay for views that go nowhere.
• There’s nothing clippable. Clipping multiplies what you already have. An interview where nothing is said is not improved by being cut shorter.