Clash of Clans Has 600M Downloads and Still Buys More Every Day.

The CPI Treadmill

Mobile UA is a treadmill, and the belt keeps speeding up. A paid install in 2026 runs about $2.97 on Android and $4.22 on iOS on average, and iOS routinely costs three to four times Android for the same game. Apple's ATT privacy changes made targeting harder, which pushed those prices higher still.

So you pay a few dollars for a download, then you do it again tomorrow, because the moment you stop spending the installs stop. Paid UA is essential and it is not going anywhere. It is just an expensive way to be the only source of new players.

The Retention Trap

Here is the part the install price hides. Most paid downloads are gone within a month. For casual mobile games, day-30 retention runs around 3 to 5 percent. So for every 100 installs you buy at $3 to $4 each, roughly $300 to $400, you keep three to five players.

Clash of Clans has more than 600 million downloads and still pulled around $355 million in 2024, and it still feeds paid UA every day. If the biggest game in the genre cannot step off the treadmill, a smaller studio has to be smarter about where the next player comes from.

Studios Already Back Creators

This is not a fringe idea. The biggest names in mobile already put real money behind creator content. Supercell, the studio behind Clash of Clans, runs an established creator programme. HOMA, one of the most data-driven mobile publishers around, has used creator-produced UGC inside its TikTok acquisition campaigns. Demand for creator content in mobile is proven.

What is not yet proven, for any given game, is which creator approach turns into profitable players. That is worth testing, not assuming. So the honest pitch is simple: ClipFlip gets your game into more creator feeds, alongside the paid acquisition you already run. More reach from creators, running next to your UA, and you measure what it does.

Two Ways to Plug ClipFlip In

The two offers work differently and cost differently, so pick by what you actually need. Most studios end up running both.

• Distribute existing content. You supply approved gameplay, trailers or UGC with redistribution rights. Our creators edit it into different hooks and formats and publish across all major short-form platforms. What you buy: more distribution from content you already own.
• Play, create and distribute. Creators download the game, follow a brief, capture their own gameplay and publish original content. What you buy: fresh, authentic UGC at scale, plus new creative angles your paid team can test too.

Distribution is the cheaper, faster play when you already have strong footage. Original UGC costs more per clip, but it hands you brand-new creative instead of more copies of the same asset. Same network of creators, two different jobs.

What Gets Clipped for Mobile

Mobile games are built out of clippable seconds. The trick is knowing which ones make a thumb stop.

• The oddly satisfying. The perfect combo, the screen-clearing chain, the meter that fills. Mobile's most replayed kind of clip.
• The rage moment. The near-miss, the one-more-try loss. Frustration is a share button, and it sells the challenge.
• The "that's a mobile game?!" The shot that breaks the stereotype of what a phone game looks like and makes people double-take.
• The meta tip. The base layout, the deck, the strategy players screenshot, copy, and argue about in the comments.

What the Reach Looks Like

Here is what the distribution layer can put up. We ran a campaign with an esports team's gameplay footage on a $2,000 budget. Creators cut it into short clips across Instagram, TikTok and YouTube.

That is a lot of qualified eyes on gameplay for the spend. Whether that reach turns into profitable installs for your specific game is exactly what a first campaign is built to measure, running alongside your existing UA so you can compare the two head to head. We would rather test that with you than promise it.