The agency keeping creators off the ‘influencer cliff’

UTA’s creator unit is being framed around one blunt market problem: how to keep internet talent from hitting the “influencer cliff.” In a Decoder interview from Cannes Lions, Ali Berman and Raina Penchansky, co-heads of United Talent Agency’s Creators division, described a model built less around fame management and more around business durability. For creators, the signal is clear: the next conversion layer is not another sponsored post. It is product, ownership, and revenue-line discipline.

UTA is treating creators like operating companies

The useful detail is not that UTA represents big names. It does: Charli D’Amelio, Markiplier, Kai Cenat, Emma Chamberlain, Alex Cooper and Alix Earle are cited among the division’s clients. The more important point is the operating model.

The Verge’s interview positions these creators as “multimillion-dollar businesses” with multiple revenue lines. That is the real cliff edge. Audience growth alone decays. Platform reach gets repriced. Brand budgets shift. The creator who is still monetizing mainly through attention has limited downside protection.

UTA’s Creators division is described as helping talent build durable businesses and strike deals beyond the traditional Hollywood agency model, where an agent simply takes a cut. The emphasis is on creators moving from making media to making products of their own.

That pivot is not cosmetic. It changes the creator from inventory into an asset owner. Better margins if it works. More execution risk if it does not.

Cannes Lions is now part of the creator balance sheet

The interview was recorded at Cannes Lions, the advertising festival where platform power, brand budgets and creator economics now collide in public. That matters because creators are no longer just campaign garnish. They are increasingly being treated as media channels, product funnels and distribution nodes.

Berman and Penchansky discussed how they identify up-and-coming talent and what it takes to build businesses around them. The article also notes that not every creator can make the jump from media to product. That line should be read as a warning, not a motivational slogan.

For creators watching from the outside, the practical audit is simple:

• Is the audience portable, or trapped inside one platform’s algorithm?
• Does the creator have more than one revenue line?
• Is there a product thesis, or just merch with better packaging?
• Can the creator convert attention without burning trust?
• Is the team built for operations, not just content cadence?

This is where ROI separates from hype. A creator with viral reach but no conversion architecture is still exposed to algorithmic decay. A creator with a smaller audience and a working product loop may be a better business.

AI is the destabilizer, not the whole story

The Verge conversation also covered AI and platforms as destabilizing forces in the creator ecosystem. UTA’s division even represents some VTubers, according to the interview. That complicates the standard human-versus-AI narrative.

The near-term market split is likely less dramatic and more financial. Human creators with weak business infrastructure will feel pressure first. Creators with stronger IP, products, and diversified revenue lines have more buffers. AI can flood supply. Platforms can adjust distribution. Neither automatically kills creators who own demand.

Other recent creator-economy headlines point in the same direction: Inc. framed the next winners as something other than “influencers,” Net Influencer tracked creator-economy hiring across brands including Rivian, Instacart and Hilton, and Streamline Feed highlighted the psychological toll of a creator market it described in trillion-shilling terms. Different angles. Same underlying shift: the category is professionalizing, and the cost base is rising.

Bottom line: the “influencer cliff” is not just a fame problem. It is a business-model problem. The creators who survive it will look less like personalities with agents and more like media companies with product-market discipline.