I’m a marketer. It isn’t really that all that suspect.
If the contract is just for him to use the crappy app, and he does it, then they are getting their money’s worth. The overwhelming majority of tech companies are in damn near permanent debt(Netflix’s debt is in the billions) and the $40k ain’t that big of a number in the grand scheme of things. If you can guarantee someone who can bring at least 10,000 or more views from a guy with 500,000+ followers, that’s a good amount of publicity and advertising for your product, if 40,000 people come to your app a month because this guy streams on it a few times a week, you paid a dollar a person. And the number is probably higher. The deal would not be there if there wasn’t a benefit. Most people see a seemingly number in a marketing budget, but fail to understand how the returns work.