Written by: Boaz Sobrado
Translation: Chopper, Foresight News
“In 2025, we spent $30,000 hiring an influencer to promote the exchange, and in the end, we only acquired one registered user,” Rhys McKay said in an interview. “The influencer was a globally known blogger, and the conversion rate was just one person.”
A few years ago, this investment could have yielded considerable returns. Before founding the short video editing agency Lumina Clippers, McKay operated a cryptocurrency marketing company for five years. He revealed that the company had cumulatively invested $30 million in influencer marketing. Once, brands were willing to spend $40,000 for an influencer to post a tweet. Between 2021 and 2022, as long as influencers promoted tokens or exchanges, brands could generally achieve positive conversions and realize a return on investment. But after 2025, this model completely failed.
The predicament faced by McKay has now become a common issue across the entire industry. Cryptocurrency and fintech brands are cutting back their paid influencer promotion budgets and shifting funds to two types of lower-cost channels. The first is snippet editing and distribution: hiring a large number of freelance creators to edit and publish short videos; the second is fan-generated secondary creations, where enthusiasts voluntarily make brand-related videos for free. The cost per thousand views for traditional paid information flow ads is about $20–80, while the editing and distribution model only requires $1–5.
2023 New York Toy Fair, Toikido's Pudgy Penguins exhibit
“The Audience Is Saturated”
“Some influencers have collaborated with over 100 brands; if your brand is the 101st, the audience is already aesthetically fatigued,” McKay said. “Influencers can no longer guide the audience to invest or use products; continuous commercial promotions have overdrawn fan trust.”
More than one marketing practitioner has chosen to withdraw from the influencer path. James Sixsmith, CEO of the futures trading platform Take Profit Trader, stated that influencer placements are difficult to control, and the company decided to retract related businesses and reduce external influencer collaborations, turning marketing work originally outsourced to influencers into internal completion.
The Rise of Short Video Armies
“We have 62,000 vetted editing creators and 5,000 UGC content producers,” McKay introduced Lumina Clippers’ operational model, where the team edits long video materials into a large number of short videos and distributes them widely on TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts. Editing creators are compensated according to view counts, with a single video having a maximum settlement cap of 100,000 views, avoiding the exhaustion of marketing budgets on a single video.
Daniel Bitton, head of a similar editing platform, straightforwardly stated the cost advantages of this model, “On our platform, the average cost per thousand views is about $1, compared to ordinary paid ads which range from $40 to $80 per thousand views, making it easy for businesses to choose. Essentially, we are creating a viral content trading market.”
Short video content also has a significant advantage: a longer traffic lifecycle. “For traditional ads, once the budget stops, the video will not get any new views,” McKay explained. “However, edited videos can retain viewership over the long term. If someone watches it this month, new users may still discover the same video two years later.”
This model has long transcended the boundaries of the cryptocurrency industry. The client list includes OKX, Adobe, Algorand, and companies like Netflix and prediction markets Polymarket and Kalshi have also launched short video marketing campaigns.
The influx of massive content also easily breeds low-quality content; McKay emphasized that strict vetting is crucial. “Many open platforms allow anyone to register, even finding someone to register an account on their behalf. Once identity verification is completed, they can upload short videos. We have application thresholds, vet accounts, and analyze video performance data.”
Fan-Driven Dissemination
Paid placements are one path; another path comes at zero cost. Zaid Attari, who was responsible for marketing the NFT brand Pudgy Penguins, believes that the highest value content is the secondary creation videos produced voluntarily by fans, which he calls “Edits.”
The Pudgy Penguins IP character, Pengu, is the best example. In 2025, this character became part of the viral TikTok meme “Tim Cheese x John Pork.” Attari stated that the brand initially invested in seed secondary creation materials, ultimately garnering about 250 million exposures within two weeks of this cross-industry promotion. He believes this intuitively proves that fan secondary creations can bring immense value to IP and tech brands. Pudgy Penguins also did not abandon paid marketing, spending nearly $500,000 on advertising on the spherical screen in Las Vegas during the holiday period in 2025.
Matt, founder of the social app Lockit, analyzed the underlying logic of why organic content prevails in the podcast “On The Margin”: “What the audience truly cares about is the video itself, not the awkwardly inserted product. This is also why native content performs better than hard ads.”
Conclusion
Another major risk is compliance issues regarding advertising information disclosure. Short videos and fan secondary creations that do not label their paid nature are akin to the tactics that led to Kardashian being fined $1.26 million by the SEC. Prediction market platforms like Polymarket and Kalshi have already faced regulatory scrutiny due to marketing activities that blur the line between “paid promotions / native content.”
However, McKay is still optimistic about this path: “I believe that in 2026, if you want to stably acquire traffic, short videos is an essential route. If you want continuous and stable exposure, it is indispensable to invest in short videos.”
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