How to Market Your Game Through the Videos Players Watch

Flat fees versus paying per view

The traditional model is a flat fee per post, negotiated channel by channel. It front-loads the risk on the studio: the money is gone whether the video gets 2,000 views or 2 million. Paying per 1,000 verified views moves that risk to performance.

Formats that drive installs and wishlists

Short gaming clips work best when they are built around one moment, not a feature list.

• The clutch: a close win, a near loss, a ridiculous play
• The reveal: the new map, boss, character or season, shown within the first seconds
• The challenge: a creator setting themselves a rule and trying to beat the game with it
• The first reaction: a creator playing the game for the first time on camera
• The build or the base: progress shown fast, for crafting, sim and strategy games

Choosing creators by genre

Genre is the strongest signal you have. A cozy farming sim and a competitive shooter need different channels, and a small creator who only plays roguelikes may move more wishlists for a roguelike than a large general channel. On ClipperTask, gaming creators list the genres they cover, so the right ones find your campaign, and you can invite the ones you like from their profiles.

YouTube Gaming's most-watched games in 2025 included Roblox, League of Legends and Mobile Legends: Bang Bang (Stream Hatchet). Big franchises draw big audiences, but they also mean competition for attention. Matching your game to the creators of its closest genre usually beats chasing the biggest names.

Setting your rate and budget

Three numbers define a campaign: the rate you pay per 1,000 views, the total budget, and the maximum one creator can earn. The rate decides how attractive the campaign is to creators; the cap decides how many creators share the budget. A low cap spreads the budget across more channels, which is useful when you are still learning which genres and formats work.

Short-form or long-form video?

Short-form video on TikTok, YouTube Shorts and Instagram Reels is where most players discover a game: many clips, many creators, quick tests of which moment lands. Long-form YouTube videos do a different job. A full first playthrough, or a sponsored segment inside a creator's usual video, convinces viewers who are already interested, and keeps getting views for months.

Most launches run both: short-form for reach in launch week, long-form for depth before and after it.

When to run it

Game launches have three moments worth paying for: the reveal, launch week and the first big update. Each needs a different brief. The reveal is about curiosity, launch week about installs, and the update about bringing lapsed players back. Running them as separate campaigns lets you compare the cost of each.

Leave enough time between the brief going live and the deadline. Creators need a few days to play the game before they can make a good clip, especially for strategy, simulation and RPG titles where the interesting moments come later.

Common mistakes

Most underperforming game campaigns fail for the same few reasons.

• Briefing a feature list instead of a single moment
• Asking every creator for the same video, so the feed fills with copies
• Choosing creators by follower count instead of by the genres they play
• Setting a deadline before creators have had time to learn the game
• Forgetting store links for one of the platforms the game is on

Budget by goal

The example campaign above has a $5,000 budget at $3 per 1,000 views, so it can buy at most about 1.67 million verified views, with a $500 cap that keeps at least ten creators involved. A reveal campaign can run on a smaller budget, because its job is to find which creators and moments get a reaction. Launch week is where most studios put the larger share, then reuse the creators who performed best for the update.

Higher rates make a campaign more attractive to creators, so a niche game with few natural fans may need a higher rate per 1,000 views than a popular genre.

How to measure results

ClipperTask reads each video's views from the platform itself, holds back views that look bought, and checks which countries the audience came from. Installs and wishlists happen in your store, so give each creator their own store link or code, then compare the cost per 1,000 views with installs per video.

If your game is a mobile title, the apps guide covers store links and install tracking in more detail. Studios launching hardware tie-ins should read the gaming gear guide.