Pricing

How clipping CPM works

CPM means cost per thousand, and in clipping it means cost per thousand views that survived a bot check. That's a narrower and more expensive unit than the one advertising uses, and the difference is the entire point.

What the thousand actually contains

CPM is a standard advertising unit with published measurement guidelines behind it. An advertising CPM buys a thousand impressions. Nobody checks. On most networks a meaningful share of those impressions were never in front of a human at all, and the invoice looks identical either way.

A clipping CPM should buy a thousand views that have each been checked against the account that produced them. That check removes accounts with no watch history, accounts that post nothing but campaign clips, accounts whose engagement curve doesn't resemble a real audience, and view curves arriving faster than a feed can physically deliver them. What's left is a smaller number than the platform reports, and it's the only number worth paying for.

The four things that move a rate

• Account tier is the largest variable by a wide margin. Creators with follower bases in the hundreds of thousands give a new post a real first impression, and access to that tier costs more than access to the middle of a network, so a campaign routed to the top tier and the same campaign routed wide are priced differently for a reason.
• Approved clip count. More clips means more editing, briefing and review, and it also means more angles, which is usually the right trade on a record with several distinct moments.
• Genre. Narrow lanes cost more per thousand, because country, Latin and dance each have a smaller eligible pool of creators than rap, so the same reach takes more of the available network.
• Clearance complexity. A single release with master and sync already signed off is cheap to set up, while a catalogue with three publishers and a featured artist isn't, and that work happens before a single clip is cut.

Urgency doesn't move the rate. We'd rather tell you a record needs ten days of clearance than take the money and start posting on audio nobody has cleared.

Why CPM beats a flat fee and beats a retainer

That last row is the whole argument, since it's the only one of the four where our incentive and yours point the same way.

Red flags in a clipping quote

• A guaranteed view number. Nobody controls how many people watch a video, so a number promised in advance is a number somebody has decided to manufacture.
• No named verification method. Ask what the bot check actually tests, because if the answer is vague there's no check.
• A promised stream count or chart position, which nobody can ever deliver. Streams follow from a sound page being used, so they're an outcome rather than a line item.
• No approval step. If clips post without you signing them off, a weak batch quietly eats the budget.
• A published flat rate card. It sounds transparent, but it means the quote was set before anybody listened to your record.

Why we do not publish a number

Because it would be wrong for most people who read it. A catalogue record with one obvious hook seeded into the middle of the network and a new single routed to top-tier accounts are genuinely different pieces of work with different costs, so a published range would flatter one and mislead the other. Neither is useful to somebody planning a release, which is why we quote the record instead.

What we'll do on a first call, before anything is committed, is tell you which of those two your record is, which is more useful than a range and takes about forty-five minutes.

Questions