Social media is becoming increasingly saturated with anonymous accounts sharing the same viral clips.
On the surface, it may appear that there’s no rhyme or reason as to why these accounts share the same videos. However, dive a bit deeper, and you’ll find an industry of ‘clippers’ who are paid to edit and distribute content across social media platforms, with earnings tied to the number of views that each clip receives.
Anthony Fujiwara, Founder of Clipping, one of the companies at the forefront of industrialising this type of content strategy, told Forbes that top earners can make between $30,000 and $40,000 per month.
Clipping can pay as little as a few cents per million views, meaning that advertising costs through clipping are significantly cheaper than other advertising channels. Brands or content creators will often share content via Google Drive for so-called clippers to download and share via their own personal accounts.
He said in his interview with Forbes: “I remember a platform having it costing $25,000 for a million views. For us, a million views could just be like a hundred dollars to a thousand dollars.”
According to Bloomberg, Clipping generated $7.7m in revenue last year, and counts industry giants such as Netflix and Amazon Prime among its biggest clients.
But where does gambling fit into this?
Research has repeatedly shown that illicit gambling operators target players through social media, as the channel faces fewer regulations compared to other advertising channels.
The opportunity to ‘go viral’ on social media also makes clipping a more lucrative opportunity for many gambling brands. In the past, we’ve seen clips of streamers such as Adin Ross playing on platforms like Stake rack up a repeated number of shares from fan accounts, boosting the brand’s visibility to potentially millions of players.
For policymakers and regulators in markets such as the UK, where MPs are currently pushing for more stringent gambling advertising rules, clipping presents a significant challenge.
Social media clips featuring the logos of Stake and fellow crypto casino Rainbet were also shown in Louis Theroux’s documentary investigating the ‘manosphere’, and were more than likely produced by editors working from a similar model to that of Clipping.
Those posting the clips are based around the world. Fujiwara noted Clipping’s top earners are based in countries such as India, the Philippines and Serbia – meaning that enforcement agencies are often reliant on social media platforms taking action.
However, already this year, the Gambling Commission’s Executive Director of Research and Policy, Tim Miller, has called out Meta for failing to take action against illegal gambling advertising.
For social media firms, there is little incentive to take action against short clips on social media, as the views also offer a revenue opportunity for the social platform itself.
Furthermore, even if they do ban accounts or take down content, the lucrative nature of clipping means that those posting content will simply create more accounts to carry on. It almost becomes like a game of whack-a-mole.
Forbes noted that the majority of clipping campaigns do not carry paid promotion labels, as required by government authorities such as the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). However, the consensus is that the FTC is unlikely to pursue action against micro-influencers.
In a recent Westminster Hall Debate, Dr Beccy Cooper MP, Vice Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Gambling Reform, asserted her belief that black market advertising could be tackled – pointing to the success of tackling the black market tobacco industry when the UK brought in new measures around the sale and promotion of tobacco products.
But the prospect of making a serious impact on the scale of the black market and its promotion across social media carries inherently different challenges, given that it takes place on a digital battlefield.
Black market advertisers do not need a physical location to hold stock like illicit tobacco suppliers, for example, meaning they can stay well beyond arm’s reach from enforcement action.
With recently-released research underlining that advertising spend is only set to escalate for black market operators in the UK compared to a decline for the regulated sector, the likes of Stake and Rainbet have an army of editors ready to share the most viral content featuring their logos to a captivated audience of millions.
