For marketers at all interested in creating viral online moments, understanding clipping and the economy that’s been created around it is essential knowledge. 

Clipping is a content distribution model where short, snackable moments are taken from longer form videos, podcasts, livestreams, or songs. The content is lightly edited, for example adding onscreen captions, and shared by a third-party on social media for compensation. Clippers, or the people sharing those clips on their own social media accounts earn a fixed rate for every 1,000 impressions the clip receives. 

Because of the lack of disclosure around the practice, it’s largely a mystery how much money is being generated by clipping or how widespread the practice is. However, Joe Lim who used to be in charge of Floodify, which ran 65,000 dummy social-media accounts on behalf of paying clients, estimates that 90% of what you see on the internet is advertising in disguise.  

Meanwhile, Propaganda Media, a leading content rewards platform that connects freelance content editors/clippers with brands and creators found that in a period of a few weeks their marketplace generated 43,000 clips which received 318 million views. Competing content rewards platform Whop is averaging over 100 million views per day through clipping. 

Browsing the bounties, or clipping opportunities, listed on sites like Propaganda, Whop and private Discord servers reveals a wide spectrum of brands and products running campaigns. That includes casinos, artists, musicians, influencers, movies, TV shows, gaming, CPG brands, and apparel brands. Since the listings are posted and paid out by third party agencies, clippers can make educated guesses about who they’re working for, but often don’t know for sure who the client is. 

So should your brand or company, dip into using clipping to market your messaging? Here’s what you need to know. 

The History Of Clipping 

Clipping was first popularized by Andrew Tate in 2022, when he paid followers for clipping his content, and through an affiliate program offered $25 for everyone referred to his Hustlers University community. That strategy resulted in him being the most searched person on earth that same year. 

Clipping has also had a huge impact in helping political and pop culture figures like Hasan Piker, Nick Fuentes, and Clavicular find their audience. Even though their actual live streams average between 16,000 – 30,000 viewers, millions more see clips from their live streams. 

Over time, the practice of clipping evolved beyond just promoting influencers and their long form videos, and from clippers being hired directly on private discord servers. It began to be embraced by the gaming industry and music industry. For example, gaming liverstreamer Rangesh “N3on” Mutama revealed he paid $1.4 million over a five-week period to a network of 303 clippers. Meanwhile, it’s widely assumed that clipping campaigns are being used on behalf of most major music artists, with tens of millions of views across thousands of videos generated through clipping campaigns for stadium acts like Lady Gaga, Selena Gomez and the Rolling Stones. 

Between 2025-2026, the practice has become mainstream across even more industries, with more content rewards platforms being created to facilitate the marketplace between brands and clippers, including MrBeast launching his own clipping service. Now even brands like Skittles are successfully running clipping campaigns. 

What’s Attractive To Brands About Clipping

It Reflects How Young People View Content – Research from YPulse found that 79% of 13- to 17-year-olds watch shows and movies in short clips on social media, while 68% said fan edits on social media make them want to watch a TV show or movie. Especially when targeting a younger audience, clips are a preferred method for discovery. 

It Can Work – Around many case studies, it’s proven to be effective at making content viral. For example, on the content rewards platform Whop, the electric musician John Summit had an initial budget of $1,050 to promote his single “Lights Go Out” over a period of 8 days. During that time, the clipping campaign drove 1.4M total likes and 32.4 million viewers across 29 approved clips across 13 different creators.

It’s Advertising Not Labeled An Ad – Unlike with traditional social media influencer partnership posts, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) doesn’t have strict parameters for when and if to disclose paid partnerships for clipping. Viewers are more likely to fall in love with a product or entertainer if they feel they’ve come across them organically, which is how clipped posts appear. 

It’s Cost Efficient – Clipping is a cheaper form of advertising, often having a $1 to $5 CPM compared to a billboard having a $10 CPM or TV spot having a $30 CPM. Also, advertisers don’t pay clippers until they actually deliver views, which involves less risk than advertisers paying influencers for paid partnership campaigns upfront, which may or may not deliver results. 

Reasons Brands Might Want To Avoid Clipping 

No Video Or Compelling Content – One clear disqualifier for clipping campaigns is not having video content. If your brand doesn’t have video content to share, there’s nothing for clippers to share. Additionally, getting views for your content doesn’t mean the audience will find it interesting. Only clip content there’s a reason to think might connect with the audience or has the potential to go viral.

Not Brand Safe – Sometimes on a content rewards platform, the client will ask for a couple of qualifiers, such as the size of the clipper’s social media following and geographic information, like how much of their audience is based in the United States. However, generally speaking brands/clients have very little insight into how clippers have built their online audience or what content is being shared in clippers other posts. It could be violent, sexual, racist or otherwise not compatible with brand values.

For example, Scuba Ryan is a popular clipper and many of his clips are violent (though they appear to be fake violence, promoting streamer Kai Cenat). As the audience becomes more educated about clipping, there is the risk that a client could be publicly called out for being associated with a controversial clipper, even if their clips aren’t labeled as paid ads. 

Fraud Is A Big Issue – For sure, fraud is a huge issue with any type of online advertising, but it’s especially a big risk around clipping. Clippers only get paid based on views, content rewards platforms can police them but they also get paid on views, meaning there’s a lot of incentive not to question if view counts are being artificially inflated. Daniel Bitton, an 18-year-old running a  clipping marketplace that pays roughly $40,000 a day to clippers, admitted bot fraud is “the single biggest threat” to his business model.

Clients need to vet content rewards platforms and ask questions about what they do to combat view fraud, before deciding if they’re reputable enough to work with. 

This Could Go Away Tomorrow  – So far the FTC has declined to weigh in on the topic of clipping, but lawyers warn they should include an ad disclosure. However, the biggest reason clipping is successful in creating viral moments is because the audience doesn’t know they’re looking at an advertisement. If the FTC decides clipping requires an ad disclosure, the industry would potentially disappear overnight. 

Final Thought: 

Being offered a cheat code to create a viral moment is pretty tempting for marketers, but if clipping is the right fit for a campaign is a question that needs to be answered on a case by case basis. Factors like campaign goals, the potential virality of the content, and the reputations of the content rewards platforms you’d be working with need to be taken into consideration. Be realistic. It’s far more likely that a clipping campaign could help a song or TV show connect with the general audience, than convince them to buy a specific brand of toothpaste. 

At the same time, exercise extreme caution. It would just take one memo about ad disclosure requirements from the FTC for clipping to become ineffective marketing. It’s not clear if clipping is going to be a permanent addition to the marketing mix, as it’s just as possible clipping will become a closed loophole that will no longer be effective for marketers.