Author: Boaz Sobrado
Translator: Chopper, Foresight News
“In 2025, we spent $30,000 on a influencer promotion for an exchange, and it only got one registered user.” Rhys McKay said in an interview, “The person was a globally well-known blogger, yet the conversion was just one person.”
A few years ago, this investment could have yielded decent returns. Before founding the short video editing agency Lumina Clippers, McKay ran a crypto marketing company for five years. He revealed that the company had invested a total of $30 million in influencer marketing. Brands used to be willing to pay $40,000 for an influencer to post a single tweet. Between 2021 and 2022, as long as influencers promoted tokens or exchanges, brands could basically achieve positive conversion and return on investment. But after 2025, this model completely stopped working.
The dilemma McKay encountered has become a common problem across the entire industry now. Crypto and fintech brands are slashing budgets for paid influencer promotions, shifting funds to two lower-cost channels. The first is short clip distribution: hiring a large number of freelance creators to edit and distribute short videos; the second is fan-driven repurposing, where enthusiasts voluntarily create brand-related videos for free. Traditional paid display ads cost about $20–$80 per thousand impressions, while the clip distribution model costs only $1–$5.
Toikido's Pudgy Penguins exhibit at the 2023 New York Toy Fair
“Audiences are saturated”
“Some influencers have worked with over 100 brands. If your brand is number 101, the audience is already fatigued,” McKay said. “Influencers can no longer guide audiences to invest or use products; continuous commercial promotions have exhausted follower trust.”
More than one marketing professional has chosen to withdraw from the influencer scene. James Sixsmith, CEO of futures trading platform Take Profit Trader, stated that influencer campaigns are difficult to manage, so the company decided to take back related operations, scale back external influencer collaborations, and bring marketing tasks originally outsourced to influencers in-house.
The rise of short video armies
“We have 62,000 vetted clip creators and 5,000 UGC content producers,” McKay introduced Lumina Clippers’ operational model. The team cuts long-form video content into numerous short clips, mass-distributing them to TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts. Clip creators are paid based on view count, with a maximum settlement cap of 100,000 views per single video to avoid exhausting the marketing budget on one video.
Daniel Bitton, head of a similar clip platform, bluntly stated the cost advantage of this model, “The average cost per thousand impressions on our platform is about $1. Compared to the $40 to $80 per thousand impressions of regular paid ads, it’s an easy choice for companies. Essentially, we are building a viral content marketplace.”
Another major advantage of short video content is a longer traffic lifecycle. “With traditional advertising, once the budget stops, the video doesn’t get any more plays,” McKay explained. “But repurposed clips can remain effective long-term. Someone watches them this month, and two years later, new users can still encounter the same video.”
This model has long moved beyond the crypto industry. The client list includes OKX, Adobe, Algorand, Netflix, prediction markets Polymarket, and Kalshi, all of whom have run short video marketing campaigns.
The influx of massive content can also breed low-quality material. McKay says strict review is crucial, “Many open platforms allow anyone to register, and even have people register accounts on behalf of others. As long as identity verification is passed, short videos can be uploaded. We have application thresholds, vet account credentials, and analyze video data performance.”
Fan-driven organic dissemination
Paid distribution is one path; the other path costs nothing. Zaid Attari, who was responsible for marketing the NFT brand Pudgy Penguins, believes the most valuable content is the repurposed videos fans create for free, which he calls “Edits.”
“The motivation behind paid short videos users see comes from profit; fan-made repurposed content is completely different,” Attari said in a voice memo. “This is creative marketing full of passion. One high-quality repurposed piece can motivate more enthusiasts to keep producing, creating a self-sustaining brand halo effect that doesn’t need brand direction.”
Pudgy Penguins’ IP character Pengu is the best example. In 2025, the character was integrated into the viral TikTok meme “Tim Cheese x John Pork.” Attari stated that the brand’s initial seeding of repurposed clips led to this cross-industry propagation achieving approximately 250 million impressions within two weeks. He believes this demonstrates the immense value fan repurposing can bring to IPs and tech brands. At the same time, Pudgy Penguins has not abandoned paid marketing, spending nearly $500,000 on a huge screen advertisement in Las Vegas during the 2025 holiday season.
Matt, founder of social app Lockit, analyzed the underlying logic of organic content winning on the podcast ‘On The Margin’: “The audience genuinely focuses on the video itself, not the product awkwardly inserted. That’s why native content performs better than hard advertising.”
Summary
“Clip distribution is great for building brand awareness, but tracking direct conversion is difficult, which is also a major industry pain point,” McKay admitted. Brands can clearly see view and share counts rising, but struggle to count the number of actual users and transaction orders ultimately generated.
Another significant risk is compliance regarding paid advertising disclosure. Short videos without a paid promotion tag, and fan repurposing, share characteristics with the practice that led to Kim Kardashian being fined $1.26 million by the U.S. SEC. Prediction market platforms like Polymarket and Kalshi have already faced regulatory scrutiny for marketing activities that blur the line between ‘paid promotion’ and ‘native content.’
However, McKay remains optimistic about this field: “I believe that if you want stable traffic acquisition in 2026, short videos are the necessary path. For consistent and stable exposure, you need to rely on short video distribution.”
