Inside the big business of the creator economy, with Ali Berman and Raina Penchansky

I'm Ben Washington, host of Snap Judgment, the award-winning storytelling podcast from KQED. And every week, Snap deals a new card, like jumping on Rihanna's private plane, or the accidental bank robber, or even the man who was swallowed by a hippo. What? Pick a card, any card. Tap to listen now to Snap Judgment from KQED on Spotify. Hey, it's Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile. Now, I was looking for fun ways to tell you that Mint's offer of unlimited premium wireless for $15 a month is back. So I thought it would be fun if we made $15 bills, but it turns out that's very illegal. So there goes my big idea for the commercial. Give it a try at mintmobile.com slash switch. Hello and welcome to Decoder. I'm Nilay Patel, editor-in-chief of The Verge, and Decoder is my show about big ideas and other problems. We've had another special episode of Decoder recorded at the Cannes Lion Advertising Festival in the south of France. I'm talking with Allie Beerman and Raina Pinchansky, who run the creators division at United Talent Agency. UTA is an enormous agency. Half the people you've ever heard speak or perform or show up anywhere have UTA agents representing them. For full disclosure, that includes me. UTA handled the sale of the forthcoming Decoder book, which means I paid them money, making this a reverse conflict of interest. Now you know. Anyhow, that has nothing to do with Allie and Raina, whose creators division represents some of the biggest creators and influencers in the world, as far as as diverse as Charli D'Amelio and Markiplier, Kysonat and Emma Chamberlain, Alex Cooper and Alex Earl. So I really wanted to know how Raina and Allie identify up-and-coming talent, how they work with that talent to build durable businesses, and what the machinations of being a top creator actually look like. After all, all of these folks are running multi-million dollar businesses with several different revenue lines. You'll hear Allie and Raina talk directly about what it takes to build those businesses, what kinds of deals they strike, and how it's all very different than the traditional Hollywood model, where your agent just takes a cut of your movie earnings. Here, UTA is helping creators literally launch products. And it's fascinating that the stars of today are going from making media to making products of their own. Not all of them can do it, so I wanted to know how Raina and Allie help their clients make that jump and what makes them successful at it. Of course, we also talked about AI, which was all the rage at Cannes, and the nature of the social platforms themselves, which enable these creator businesses, but can also destabilize them at the drop of a hat. I think you'll find Allie and Raina to be refreshingly chill about all of that, even though they represent some Vtubers of their own. There's a lot going on in this one. Allie and Raina have been working with digital talent going back to the blogger days, and they have a lot to say about how it actually works. Okay, Allie Behrman and Raina Pinschansky. Here we go. Raina Pinschansky, Allie Behrman, you are the co-heads of the creators division at United Talent Agency. Welcome to Decoder. Thank you. Thanks for having us. Yeah, I am really excited to talk to both of you. I need to disclose right away I'm a UTA client. This is like a reverse conflict of interest. Like, I think I pay UTA money, but that's fine. So it's a good conflict. I'm hoping it causes a journalism scandal and this gets shared widely. I am very curious about how the creators division works. You guys have been in the game forever. One of our ideas here on Decoder is that the structure of organizations tells you a lot, and creators has been restructured. You guys are the new heads. It started in 2024. We're here at Cannes. It's creators everywhere here. They are the future of advertising. There's so much money floating around this festival and in advertising. Tell me how UTA works with creators, how this division is structured, your backgrounds, how we got here. I'm going to let Allie start. Well, just me personally, I've been at UTA. I'm going into my 16th year. Yeah. And I've only ever worked at a talent agency, for better or for worse. I started my career at another agency a few years into that, moved over to UTA in a very Jerry Maguire meets Entourage-esque moment and worked on the more, you know, traditional literary side of the business, but was in love with the internet and what the internet was at the time, which was very blog-centric. Self-discovery was really up to you. You didn't have algorithms, you know, feeding to you. It was, you know, obviously a very different era than at the time UTA had a burgeoning, what was called digital department. That was really a catch-all for anything that was non-traditional film or TV. And I went into that division as an entrepreneur and ultimately really gravitated towards artists who were forming their own communities and, you know, going direct to consumer and really believed that there was going to be a day where you could monetize those communities. And so helped shape what at the time was the digital talent division. And right around that time, our third co-head, who's not here today, Oren Rosenbaum. He's at Cannes, but not physically in this room. He's doing another interview downstairs. He was doing the same thing, but on the audio side of the business. And so we were, and even, you know, beyond that, beyond my story, UTA was the first agency in Hollywood to think about artists in a way other than what you traditionally thought of them as. Yeah. And so, you know, we're actually celebrating our 20th year as a, what we now refer to as a creators division. And so, you know, Oren was building, you know, similar to what I was building, but on the audio-focused side. We acquired two companies, you know, one on the gaming and esports side. And then I'll kick it over to Raina, and then we'll pick it back up to where we are today. So I was one of the co-founders of Digital Brand Architects. And this is 16 years ago, actually before Instagram had even launched. And I came from a traditional marketing background. And so what I was drawn to in terms of like seeing the bloggers that Allie referenced, the bloggers, the vloggers at the time, were these people who were building these communities directly with their audience. And I'd come from fashion and marketing, and I was used to the sort of top-down relationship with the consumer. And it was so exciting to see at the time all these women, these sort of street style women who were building this relationship with their audience and who were like essentially the next generation of editors and the next generation of media properties, and they just didn't sort of know it yet. And so in my time at the brand that I had been with, I was working with a lot of these, you know, women in fashion. And they would sort of come to me organically and say like, oh, you know, such and such brand wants me to post. Like, what should I charge? Or so-and-so wants me to be in a lookbook or a fashion show. And it became like sort of this, I became sort of like a fairy godmother of sorts, you know, to just like, you know, answering questions in the vein of like, how do you build? And it was totally organic at the time. It was just like I was inspired by these women and thought like, oh, there's something here. I didn't know it was, you know, I think like most sort of entrepreneur stories, it wasn't necessarily, I wasn't connecting the dots as to like what the business was. I was like inspired by like the storytelling component of it and sort of what they represented in terms of where there was like, oh, wait, there's something, there's something here. And that's sort of 16 years ago. And then UTA acquired DBA in 2019. And now it sits within the realm of UTA creators. So I have the role of CEO of DBA and then co-head with Allie and Oren. And we've sort of, we've built this, you know, they're church and state in terms of management and agency, but we have a back of house that services both. So we have the brand partnerships team and a products development team. And it's like massive data and analytics and sit at the epicenter really of like everything that's sort of taking place in the overused word of creator economy, but you know, and really, and building and thinking about, you know, what this next chapter to your point, you know, every single conversation is around creator. That's fine. But then what does the next chapter of it look like? And I think what we, what Allie and Oren and I come to the table with is this idea of like, we've been in this long enough to be, you know, to know it so well, but to also be able to anticipate and be excited about the sort of next chapter of it. And that's like our love language for the three of us. Yeah, no, completely. I think, you know, what's inspiring us, what continues to inspire inspire us is, is, you know, setting the bar, which is what we did, you know, 20 years ago and we've been building this for 20 years. And so, you know, where are we going to place the next bar? Yeah. And that's what we're constantly talking about and thinking about. And when you look around Because of how multifaceted careers have become and that it's not, you know, at a time in the creator economy, it was really just driven by brand deals, you know? And we were working with clients who we'd say, oh, their business is, and I don't mean to use the word just because I don't mean to minimize it. Those businesses are incredibly healthy and vibrant and important. But this business, you know, their business is, it's just going to be brand deals and endorsement deals. Now, I would argue that if we go and we look at our roster, the majority of our clients are doing way more than just brand deals. And so when, you know, you're being represented in an agency and especially you've got a creator division inside an agency, you're really quarterbacking their careers inside all of the different dimensions and facets that, you know, there are to entertainment. And we're so fortunately fortunate, you know, to be, you know, seated at a place like UTA where we've got experts and, and market leaders in literally every area. Can I, I'm just going to put forth an idea of structure here and you guys can react to it. It just sounds as you're describing it, a traditional media company from 10 years ago would have a bunch of infrastructure, right? They would have accountants and finance people and a licensing division, and they would have talent and it would pay the talent whatever number. Maybe UTA would like negotiate that talent rate, but that would be the end of UTA. And then the business, whatever big old Hollywood studio would have like rooms full of accountants, like making the business go. This is my imagination of what old Hollywood was like. But that was like basically Sony's business. We're going to make a show, we're gonna pay everybody. And then we're gonna license that show to whatever networks around the world. It sounds like UTA and what you guys are doing is we've decentralized the talent, right? They don't all work for studios in the same way. And you're providing that infrastructure layer so that creators don't have to think about, okay, like how does my business actually work? You have a playbook or you have an approach for each of those creators. Is that a good way to think about it? Because I'm constantly thinking about where the centralization and decentralization comes. And the big media businesses, in my opinion, don't seem like they have a future. Like they can't support all that overhead. Well, I think that's a tricky one because our clients are the modern day media businesses. And so, yeah. They don't have rooms full of accountants. I hope not. You're not telling them to hire rooms full of accountants, right? No, no. But they've got extensions of their teams that are, you know, helping them think through what is their P&L. And, and we do have some clients who have in-house, you know, accounting because it's necessitated. But, I mean, we're certainly decentralizing it, but I think the centralization happens within their own orbit and within their own organization. It does. I'm just really curious about, you know, big media companies are struggling in a lot of ways. And a lot of the reason they're struggling is their distribution has gotten way away from them, right? So if you own a broadcast network, that is very lucrative, but there is a time limit on how much money that thing is going to make and how many people are going to watch it. Right. I don't think a lot of people are turning on their TVs to watch over-the-air broadcast anymore. That number is going down. They are all opening Instagram every single day, probably while they're watching TV. And it, the cost structures of making that content are changing. And so I think that means the structures of the companies that make that content have to change with them. Yes. And it just seems like you two are figuring out a role to play inside of those structures. Yes. And we're figuring out how to optimize for the new version of what those media companies are, which is, yeah, they're, they are, to Allie's point, they're their own media company. So what does that entail, right? Is there going to be physical product? Are we going to do events? What is the TV component of it? Like we have, we have, we are working within the world of how are we taking all of this and turning you into the next media company. But yes, to your point, it's completely become decentralized. And, but we sit at this sort of epicenter of connecting those new dots in the decentralized world. Yeah, this is why I'm asking the structure question. Like so many times on Decoder, my joke is if you tell me your structure, if you tell me your org chart, I can tell you like 80% of your problems. And it's like the 20% where the magic is. And here it just seems like this isn't an org chart. You have a bunch of clients who are building businesses and you two are playing some huge role in structuring those businesses so they're predictable, so they're monetizable, so they operate this difference between management and agent, right? Like there's- I mean, I think that's why there's such nuance in talking about it because there's the pie is so big and so, and there are so many things that creators have the ability to do because again, of the sort of community and the relationship to audience. So because of that seismic shift, the opportunities are endless. So our job is to sit at that intersection of like, how are we connecting the dots between this person's content and then all of the sort of plethora of opportunities. 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Shop Wayfair's 4th of July clearance now through July 6th at Wayfair.com. Wayfair, every style, every home. Welcome back. I'm talking with UTA's Raina Panchansky and Allie Beerman about how distribution shapes media and how influencers are shaped by platforms. One of the things I'm really curious about, Allie, I read a story you were quoted saying, platforms come and go. Other people perceive that as a threat. That's the opportunity. Just to be like all Marshall McLuhan about it, I believe that the medium is the message, that your distribution shapes what you make pretty directly. A TikToker is different than a YouTuber. I think we all understand this intuitively now. Those distribution platforms, they have an infinite array of content. The algorithms come and go. How do you... Most media businesses are shaped by their distribution, like in real ways. Like a print newspaper company understands like, our whole flow has to generate the stories by the end of the day so the print newspaper can go out. A broadcast television company understands its distribution and they make something for that distribution. Content creators have to understand every distribution and it's ever changing. How do you build a business around distribution that is not really in your control or is not really predictable that way? I want to go back to the first part of your comment slash question, which is, the distribution determines what the content is or what the product is. What we believe in is at the end of the day, a star is a star. So it doesn't matter what the platform is or what the distribution is. If you're a star, you're a star. You know, it doesn't, you know, whether you're a YouTuber or a TikToker or a podcaster. I mean, that's why we formed this creators division, because we believe that, you know, anyone who's going direct to their audience and building these communities and are stars, like it's irrespective of where they fall, right? Well, I just, I think a lot of corporate structures tend to mirror their distribution, at least in media. And here the distribution is like the wild west. It's just constantly changing. So how do you, you know, if the goal here is to help people build media businesses and distribution is just sort of a It's magic and logic, right? And I think that that's what's really great, I think, about our space, and I'm assuming, I mean, that's what we're talking about, but the lighting up, because I sort of did the same thing. I was like, oh, that's a fun question. It's like, there's some, there's logic in what we all do, right? There's analytics, there's data, there's follower counts, all the things. But the magic is the most fun part of it. When you see a creator and you see a piece of content, and you see something, like, we're inspired by it. It's like, we love it. Like, that's what's motivating. And I think the decision-making in our world comes down to the content and what you're sort of, and when you see someone, and like Ali referenced, like stars, like, there's just something, whether it's like, they're endearing, and they're, like, there's a thing, and that's the magic, and there's a spark in our, in our sort of day-to-day lives as it relates to clients. And I think that's what, knowing how to sort of toe the line between the magic and the logic, I think it's the best part. Yeah. You know, whether it's magic and logic, and oftentimes what I say is when I'm asked the question of, I'm not trying to veer us down this path, so I'll see this next thing with a disclaimer, but you know, I often get asked, do you feel threatened by AI in terms of replacing your jobs and helping artists navigate their careers? And it's like, absolutely. Well, first and foremost, no, we're not threatened by AI. We think it's, you know, to Raina's point, our clients wear so many hats. And so we think it's just, you know, created incredible, an incredible opportunity to, you know, help outsource a lot of, you know, resourcing. But no, because it's where art meets science, you know? And it's, again, it's that human-to-human connection that really helps you figure out, you know, how you can help somebody accomplish their goals in life, which is such an incredible opportunity that we have. Don't worry, we're going to come back to AI and what kind of threat it is. Raina, I want to ask you, you were also in this Wall Street Journal piece. There's a quote that says you have an almost psychic ability to discern when brand deals are good or bad. And I've just, someone else said that about you. I don't think you disagreed with it, to be perfectly clear. That's a decision-making process. Do you just stare at the ocean and decide if a brand deal is good? How does it just come to you? What's your, I mean, that's, I think this is a, for many of our listeners who want to go into this career, knowing brand deals to take and which one's not is like the first hardest question. So how does your almost psychic ability work? How do you make these calls? Listen, there are a lot, I could give you the list of things I'm not good at, but I have high EQ. So I think that's the, that's the piece of the psychic ability. I think when, listen, we all have a gut sense of things. And your first instinct is normally the sort of right instinct. And I think people have a tendency to sort of second guess. And, and, and, and this just might be the sort of entrepreneur in me, but I tend to sort of make, I sort of do things quickly. Like I'm thoughtful about it, but it's also a matter of like, huh, that doesn't feel right or something. Like, you know, when something is a good idea and then, you know, when you're taking a beat. And I think that, you know, if you're sort of taking a beat because you're hesitant, that that's normally not the right, you know, sort of place, but brand, you know, creators are, they are in tune to their audiences and they're, they're creators by their nature because they're meant to be doing this. And I think if you're meant to be in front of the camera, you also have, you're going to have the best sense of what you're supposed to be doing and like, what is the right sort of, you know, and you build these teams and you all have these conversations and you should talk about these long-term strategies and plans. But ultimately, you know, the creator is putting themselves in front of the camera and putting them at the forefront of this content. And I think if you're having, if you're trying to figure out what the right brand deal is, you got to sort of go with your gut. Yeah. And I think it's so easy to default to just being so highly transactional in this space and just saying yes to everything that comes your way. But, you know, what shapes you is the discernment, you know, and the, the, the point of view that, you know, you as an artist and your team around you have around what you should and shouldn't be doing. And, you know, our goal is always for our clients to do what's obvious in terms of what their audiences, you know, want to see from them, but to continue to position them to do what's not obvious. So we can, you know, help them innovate and help them create, you know, continue, you know, different edges to who they are. Yeah. The most fun is when it's an outside the box idea. And then it's like, oh, is this totally left of center and this is going to feel like a little strange? Like we should do this. Yeah. Is that all incoming? Do you go out? Do you come up with crazy ideas and go out to clients? Oh yeah, absolutely. What's that process like? Everybody in a room, brainstorming, talking about, you know, we used to say like, what do you want to do in five years? But five years feels so far, far off. So it's like, what do we, what do we want to do in the next 18 months? Yeah. In the next 18, what do we want to do in the next 18, what are we trying to accomplish in the next 18, 24 months? We break it down to a lot of different things. Like what are the huge, what are the IP ideas? What are the huge sort of offline things we want to do? And then what are the steps that sort of lead us to that? And what are the things that we do along the way? What's amazing in terms of like, what's a dream thing that you've always wanted to do, but then what's like a really practical thing that we need to do to build to get there. Absolutely. I was just going to say that, which is, it's like, you ask the question of what are your goals? Let's build the strategy. And then let's start down the path. Tell me about that cadence of this. I think most people see creators, like they just open the apps and they see the videos and they're excited and they're entertained. You're describing it like a business process, a series of meetings and goals and charts and KPIs. What's the process? Do you meet with creators on a cadence? Oh, absolutely. I mean, the majority of our clients were in weekly or bi-weekly or, you know, monthly touch bases because what we've done is the second that we start working together, we build what that overall strategy is. And then, you know, just like you work at a company, you have a normal nine to five, but you're, you know, meeting as a team to update everybody on, you know, where this project is or, you know, where these numbers are, if you're in a sales position. And we're doing the same. Yeah. I'm really curious about it because I think people who want to go into this career don't understand that they might be running a pretty complicated business on the backend. Yes, yes. And I'm curious, you know, you were early to some big names. Talk about, we've been talking about creators as a monolith, I think for this conversation, but these are all different creators. I think you have Charlie D'Amelio, who has a very different business than Alex Earle and Jake Shane than Emma Chamberlain. Like these all seem like people are situated differently. One, how do you decide, okay, these are the people we should go after and try to sign? Because you're pretty early. Like historically, I think you in particular have seen the talent early, Allie, and made sure to go get them. And then you've got to convince them, okay, like now you have to have a bunch of business meetings with me because that's the thing that's going to help you grow. And that's not the time you're spending making the content for the audience. So how do you identify the people early and then how do you get them on the path to building the business? I think collectively, you know, on the, on the, you know, management side of the creator's business and, you know, the agency side, we believe that the earlier we partner with the talent, the better it is for them so that they can continue doing what they're doing, which is creating content and building community. Leave the rest to us to be, you know, your trust us, you know, as part of what's left, what's left in the process and fail fast at things, you know, like try things, fail fast. But like I said earlier, continue working to what is that overall goal. I feel like vanishingly few people are ever going to experience the full force of an Ali Beerman pitch. Right. I mean, like most people want to get it. Maybe that's a goal, but you're only going to selectively pick a few people. So what's it like? What do you actually say Yeah, I'm curious about those deal structures, because that seems like it's also the Wild West. So many of your creators, creators across the ecosystem, are now just starting their own businesses, right? To sell their own products. As much as we might not be threatened by AI, or as much as we don't think the algorithms change, I'm often struck by how lucrative it is for creators to go from digital businesses to physical businesses, which basically is not how things should work, right? You should go to way higher-margin digital products, but all the creators have to leave the digital world, and they have to market. I think it's crazy that the Paul brothers sell bottled water, which is historically not a great thing to be wanting to ship around the world, but that is a vastly more lucrative business than their digital business. So there's a part here where we're going to stand up a white-label makeup line, or whatever the thing is that we're going to do. How do you play in that? Because it feels like those deal structures and those commission rates would be very different than the standard brand deal commission. Yeah, and listen, I mean, we've been doing those deals for quite some time and have put together some of the, you know, some if not all of the most successful examples of those. Those are really complicated deal structures. And they take a tremendous amount of time and energy and detail. And we participate on them. We sit on the cap table along with clients because, again, we're in the room putting it all together and then staying and being a part of it. I think the difference with those kinds of deals is that it's not, you know, It's not just an introduction. It's not just a licensing deal. You are, you know, we are involved in packaging, distribution, marketing, you know, all of the things that really are fundamental to launching these brands, and we're sitting at the table right alongside these teams and helping and facilitating. And to be honest with you, there, it's not a straightforward answer because there are infinite ways that these deals come together. Whereas, you know, on the more traditional, you know, just highly transactional side of business, it's, you know, a fee for a service, right? And these are incredibly, you know, as Rena said, complicated, but can come together in so many different ways in terms of, you know, capital coming from here or capital coming from there, you know, from the talent directly. And it just, it really depends on how the deal shapes and how it all comes together. And then we, you know, like Rena said, we get in the room and we have a conversation and we figure it out, but it is not just an introduction. And it's really about staying in there because every day we're sitting across the four corners that is our client's business. And so we're constantly trying to figure out how do we maximize, you know, to speak in metaphorical terms, how do we build the biggest book? How do we add as many pages to this book as possible? And we're not just trying to, you know, hand it in with a one-page document. Yeah. I think the reason I'm pushing on this is this is new. It feels new for talent to be needing to launch physical products, businesses to have something that will create enterprise value that they can maybe sell at the end of the road in a way that selling a TikTok channel might not be as easy to transact on. And I see the push from all of the biggest creators to launch that next business. I don't think UTA has historically been in the business of, we're going to help you launch products. We're going to sit in your design meetings or your packaging meetings. I don't think the other agencies have either. Your, I think, CAA's, your competitor, they just launched a fund to buy creator businesses in this way. It seems like that's one of their opportunities. You seem less interested in actually transacting and owning the things, right? You're trying to help the creators build their own businesses. There's something shifting, right, where we understand that the businesses should have long-term value and maybe exit in some way. Yeah. So I think one thing that I think is important to note if you're sort of a creator or someone who wants to, you know, be in the space of going from digital to sort of physical product, the money's not the issue. Money is, candidly, is easy to come by. So if that's not really, it's about being in business with people who understand how to launch successful businesses. And for all of the incredible examples of the successes in any sort ofLaunching of products, we can all think of thousands that weren't successful. So it's like the devil's in the details in terms of like, who are your partners? Who are you building with? Who has the infrastructure? Who understands these spaces? Who's been in them for a long time? Who's done these sorts of deals and who knows the entire sort of landscape? The capital isn't the, isn't the issue. It's the infrastructure. It's the knowledge. It's the institutional knowledge. It's the rest of it. That's really, I think what's important. That's what we're, you know, very happily bringing to the table. It is true that sitting here in the South of France at one of the most moneyed events I've ever been at, the capital does not feel like the issue. It's really not. The capital is not the challenge. There's just a lot of money floating around here that has no idea what to do. Yes. But you got to really understand and know how to bring a product to market and how to connect those dots to have this be successful. And again, it goes back to, you have to really understand your client and you have to speak that language. We have to pause here for another short break. We'll be back in just a minute. Pros trust The Home Depot for heavy-duty storage solutions for any job site or garage. 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I think her name is Carmen Vicente, and she coined this term called the influencer cliff, which is when the creator goes to try to directly sell their own product and the audience rebels because that's a misalignment, right? They accept the sponsorship deals or the brand integrations because that supports what they're there for. And when you flip the switch to being more directly commercial, that misaligns you with the audience and then we all end up issuing apologies. And she says, most people, like a lot of people fall off the cliff and some people get to exit. You have a lot of clients who've managed to pull it off. What do you think the difference is? Why do you think you're nodding your head? I think you generally agree with this concept that it's really hard. Why do you think some creators fall off the cliff and they can't sell directly to their audience and some people are able to achieve escape velocity? I think there's a fundamental philosophical relationship between this talent and their audience because the reason why they have this relationship in the first place is because the content has been free. And so the first time that they're asking their audience to transact, that's going to go one way or the other. There has to be a content market fit, right? It has to be something that is only going to continue to add to this free content that the audience has been getting and it's going to continue to get. There's a technical shift in what that relationship is between the artist and their audience. And it's not going to work for everyone. What are the signs that it'll work and what are the signs it won't work? Again, it's that content. If you can fit it into your content and not have to make a big effort to do so, that checks the biggest box by far. I'll give an example. We have a client, Patrick Starr. He has a beauty line that he came out with five years ago, One Size Beauty. One of the biggest beauty brands at Sephora, a product of his, a setting spray, which one of the products he's known for, sells every eight seconds at Sephora. He came and said, we had a conversation. It was sort of like, of course, Patrick Starr, who's like this insane YouTuber, Beauty space is going to have a makeup line you know, consume content, you know, purchase products, you know, whatever is being fed at them. Is that good? I mean, I'm not here to be the arbiter. I think that's a different podcast. Yeah, I was actually going to say. This podcast. I'm not here to be the arbiter of... I'm going to drag you into your feelings whether you like it or not, Alyssa. Yeah, I'm not here to be the arbiter of, you know, what's ethical in our current consumer market. Sure, but I'll just use a counterexample to that. I insistently make journalism, which means I don't make as much money as I should. And what we are joke about are the, like the Verge's subscription product that's stopping a joke and actually became the thing you started marketing. It's what you're buying from us is our ethics policy that you can't buy me. I won't do a brand deal. I won't even read the ads on the podcast, which drives everybody crazy. We are just leaving money on the table every single day. And our youngest consumers had no idea that was a thing. Right? They don't, they didn't grow up in that world. There was no, you know, Gen Alpha is like, where are the ads? Yeah, they're like, where are the ads? Like, and we're like, no, we don't do it. Like, I literally have to say out loud, these are the things that... You know what you should sleep? It's like, and now a message from our sponsors. Like, we just don't do it. We don't integrate the content. And we say this is what differentiates our information from everything else. And that's fine. Like, we just, it's just market. And maybe we'll die. Maybe I should have been reading the ads every single day. But you just mentioned Gen Alpha in that way. And it's like, I don't know if anyone is telling them that there are other ways to be. And so, like, the notion that it's all consume and market and purchase, at some point, people just like grow up and their habits change and their tastes change. Maybe we'll sign the next anti-marketer. That's, that's the move. Yeah. It just feels like maybe in the deepest way, like, there will be a rebellion to that. Right? There's, in every counterculture, there's some rebellion against that kind of commercialization. Well, I think that, listen, the pendulum always swings. Right? But I think that you're sort of, like, we're seeing it now in terms of nostalgia having this big moment and everyone being sort of nostalgic and, and everyone loved, you know, everyone was obsessed with Love Story and this sort of nostalgic content and the throwbacks to the 90s or whatever. You know, I have an 11-year-old daughter. She's Gen Alpha. Like, she has only grown up knowing that this is what it is. She doesn't have the point of reference that I have where I'm remembering, like, looking through the pages of Vogue and, you know, and having that sort of emotional relationship with, like, the ads or the content. They're, you know, these generations aren't comparing it to anything. They're not necessarily thinking that there's a bad or a good version of this. This is just sort of what they know. And I think that, you know, obviously pros and cons to everything. And I think, but at the end of the day, if you think of it, we're all sort of our own marketers, right? Whether that's in our day-to-day job, in our role, whether you're advocating for yourself and this is, you know, for a salary raise or whatever that is, we are all sort of marketers. Some of us are marketers with a platform. Yeah. And some of us are marketers in our everyday. Yeah. That's the thing. I mean, I think I mentioned it earlier, you know, when I first got into the digital ecosystem, it was at a time where you were driving your own algorithm. So like to Rena's point, it's like, I can remember growing up and I was driving the algorithm in terms of, you know, going through this big Vogue magazine or InStyle magazine and figuring out what I liked. But now the world knows the consumer. And I just don't know, I don't know if that's going to change. I think that's the world we live in now. I really do. And I think it's, it's a spectrum, right? And I think some people will, you know, want to be more forward about, you know, self-discovery and, you know, I don't want to be fed as much. Right. But I also think that just the world we live in. I also think that the other side of the coin is that we're living in a more egalitarian society, right? So it's like there are people on the internet who didn't have a place before, you know, like you're, you're getting, you're being exposed to different people. You're being exposed to different things. Like, you know, you're seeing different kinds of content, like people who are whatever that is, like, I think that the other side of the coin is that like, it's opening, it's broadening the sort of spectrum of who can become, you know, there used to be a sort of mechanism for who got to be famous and who got to have a voice. And that doesn't exist in that anybody, you know, a lot of people can have a voice and that's a good thing. So we've come now inexorably to AI. And my, maybe my own dim views of the platforms that you, I don't think you share. But if I describe the mistake, the traditional media companies have made over the past 10 years, it's we will get enough scale to bring YouTube to the table and cut us a bigger check than everyone else. Right. Jonah Peretti was just on Decoder. And maybe the original sin of millennial digital media was Jonah Peretti believed he could go so viral that Facebook would pay him money. And Mark Zuckerberg looked at him and said, now I can replace you with an army of teenagers who will work for free. And he killed most of these companies. Like they're all gone. You still have that problem, right? You only, you have, you have stars who have risen above it, but at any point, you still have that problem, right? You have a bunch of stars in your roster who have risen above it. You have a lot of scale. You have good relationships with the platforms. It seems like, but you still have no ability to bring Neil Mohan, the CEO of YouTube to the table and get better rates for your talent. Right. You have to monetize them in other ways. And at some point, Neil and Adam Mosseri, who runs Instagram, they're going to start putting AI content into these feeds, perfectly tailored to the consumer. They've already said they want to do this. And they're going to start taking minutes of attention away from all of the creators. And something else will happen. I'm saying this in sort of stark terms because they say it all the time. They're not shy about it. Adam Mosseri just put out a blog post where he's like, maybe every Instagram app will be different for every person. And I'm worried about what that will do to society, but we're going to do it anyway. And I immediately wrote Adam and said, you got to come on the show. And Adam, if you're listening, you got to come on the show and talk about that with me. But that's the future of the platforms, see that they're going to even more infinitely tailor the contents of people that they'll make AI avatars of creators on YouTube. Somewhere they will reap the rewards of the AI avatars of the creators on YouTube. That's not 10 years from now. That's tomorrow, right? That's coming really fast. How are you thinking about hedging against those threats? Neil Mohan said yesterday that, you know, YouTube's position is that there's too much AI slop out there and he wants to make sure that YouTube is a place for, you know, real human made or human touched AI content. Do you believe him? I do believe him. I think YouTube is the best place to tell a story and is one of the best places to tell a story. And I firmly believe that there has to be a human touch on the product. I mean, it's obviously, we're all talking about AI and it's been interesting because in all the meetings that I've been in with sort of creators and brands talking about it this week, everyone sort of goes to the same thing, which is like, yeah, AI is a great tool, but I, like, there's only so many sort of cats bouncing on, you know, like it's just that, you know, like you, you get, you look at, at a certain point, you sort of look past the AI generated content and you're like, I see that it's AI is fine as whatever. Like no one seems to be like really gravitating towards this idea of like the consumer, I mean, does not seem to be gravitating towards this idea of like, right. They're not, they're not like, it's not, it's, it's the content is not contenting. So like, will it exist? Of course. But listen, we just saw this massive thing go down in New York with the Knicks, right? This, this insane desire for this like human connection and for, you know, it's like the conversation was taking place on these platforms and then it was taking place offline. And I think that like that, we're only going to see more of this sort of the relationship between the platforms and the content and creators building these communities and building these audiences and then sort of figuring out these IRL experiences. It's not a coincidence that there was that, this groundswell around these sort of moments and finding this community and finding your people. And and likeness aren't being used to the extent that we can, to your point, whether that's in the confines of legal or whether it's through legal channels or what have you. We're out to protect our clients to the extent that, obviously, we want to. Yeah, I'm curious. That just feels like the bleeding edge of having to protect your clients, right? It's very easy to reuse the content. It's very easy to steal people's likeness. It's very easy to steal people's voices. It just feels like there's some part of the creator economy that's going to run into that at just massive scale. I mean, there's a reason there's deepfake legislation floating around. Everyone understands that it's a problem. I'm just wondering if you're hearing that from your creators and if you're taking that to the platforms. I think the platforms have also been incredibly responsible in protecting the talent, too. I mean, you look at the tools that YouTube has come out with. And like I said earlier, this is where the platforms have a continued opportunity to prioritize and protect the human beings that power the storytelling. Yeah. You've both given me a lot of time. I just want to wrap up with a very quick lightning round question. We exist in a time of huge platforms. What do you see as nascent? Is there a next platform on the rise that you've got your eye on? Is there another move digitally that people should be... Where's the next group of creators going to come from? I think there's going to be a real resurgence in live content. I think we saw an incredible boom around that pre-COVID and into early COVID. And then as people started to get back out into the world, the business just started to change. But I think, and that business was so concentrated in gaming or, you know, more streaming culture. And I think we'll start to see other categories and niches and verticals that really start to thrive in that medium. Yeah. What about you, Raina? I mean, listen, Gen Alpha. Marketing consuming all day long. Can 2036? We're going to come back around. What's next for ETA? What should we be looking at from the both of you? That's such a hard question to answer because there's so many conversations going on, so many things. And by the time we answer it, we will have iterated on it. You know, we're constantly evaluating all of the different, you know, opportunities and directions we can go. And then, you know, something happens with content. You're moving at the speed of content. We're moving at the speed of content. You heard it live. I'm going to take my royalty back for that one. This was really great. Thank you so much for joining Decoder. Thank you. I'd like to thank Raina and Ali for taking the time to speak with me. And thank you for listening. I hope you enjoyed it. If you'd like to let us know what you thought about this episode or really anything else at all, drop us a line. You can email us at decoder at the verge.com. We really do read all the emails. Or you can hit me up directly on threads or blue sky. We're also on YouTube. You can watch full episodes at DecoderPod. We also have a TikTok and an Instagram, also at DecoderPod. They're a lot of fun. If you like Decoder, please share it with your friends and subscribe wherever you get podcasts. Decoder is a production of The Verge and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. The show is produced by Kate Cox and Nick Stat. This episode was edited by Xander Adams. Our editorial director is Kevin McShane. The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. We'll see you next time. Hear that? That's the sound of Busy. To a restaurant, all that shouting and banging might as well be a symphony. It means the long days and longer nights are paying off. Sure, it's noisy, but there's a worse sound. This. Not Busy. Busy means business, which is why Toast gives restaurants the tools and tech they need to help them perform under pressure. Sounds pretty good, right? 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