FEATURED

Sep 7, 2026

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8 min read

Happy Labor Day, Let the Robots Work 🤖

It's the one holiday built around not working, which means every rep reading this is going to spend part of it clearing an inbox. So here are five AI workflows I actually use or have watched work, ranked by how many hours they give back. Not the "AI will write your emails" garbage. This is stuff that kills your days so you work all night.

Phil Ranta

THE LATEST

Aug 31, 2026

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8 min read

How Meta Won by Losing $17 Billion 🏆

Meta just settled the biggest child safety case in tech history, and the stock went up. So Meta loses, keeps every mechanic that actually makes the money, and walks out calling itself the industry standard. And the one thing it doesn't fix is the thing it was sold to fix: kids are still going to lie about their age and get in anyway.

Aug 24, 2026

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7 min read

Meta's $1.4 Trillion Problem Is Your Problem 📱

Meta's finally getting sued for an amount that isn't a rounding error for them. $1.4T for knowingly hurting kids with their product and saying, "Nothing to see here." But there's a stupid amount of evidence that they always knew there was something to see here. But these trials, whether Meta wins or loses, are about to change the face of social media for a while.

Aug 17, 2026

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6 min read

10 Creator Companies You're Sleeping On 😴

My team at Fullscreen once made me a shirt in Game of Thrones text saying 'Q4 is Coming'. It's always been a bit of a mantra. Depending on the study you read, between 30% and 40% of influencer marketing budget is deployed in Q4, so you can think of the rest of the year as the season leading up to the Q4 World Series. While you still have a few weeks left, think about getting some of these great companies on your side.

Even HBO Is Running a Clip Farm Now 🎬

It's usually safe to assume Hollywood will be about 5 years behind the internet. HBO is proving they're only about 2 years behind when it comes to clipping. Is clipping here to stay or is the market already saturated?

50 Creator Economy Trends for 2026 🧐

Remember Buzzfeed quizzes? Let's do one for the creator economy. Honor code. I'm going to list what I consider to be the top 50 creator economy trends happening in 2026. No cheating! Count the amount you're hip to and I'll give you a score at the end. May the odds be ever in your favor.

Streamer University Is a Hit Factory 🎓

Kai Cenat built the thing Hollywood forgot how to make: ways for new talent to break into the industry. Streamer University has resulted in many of the most exciting new social media stars from the past few years: Tota MC, Rakai, Yonna, Snowcone. If these names mean nothing to you, it's time to catch up! Let's talk about what Kai is doing, why it works, and how you can play.

The $1 Billion Creator List Is Actually Bad News 💰

For the first time, Forbes' Top 50 creators cleared a combined $1 billion in earnings. Champagne, right? Not so fast. The top 10 took home over 60% of that money, and the gap between the mega-creators and everyone else is widening at the worst possible time. Let's talk about what this means for the creator middle class, and the reps who serve them.

The Social Media Child Safety Debate 👶🏻

We all want children to be safe, right? But are social media bans really about child safety or government controlling speech? There are loud voices on both sides but, most importantly, if you couch any issue in something as popular as 'child safety' the citizenry is likely to be on the side of the bill. Is there a middle-ground to be reached?

What Happened at VidCon? 🤨

VidCon 2026 is in the books and we're all in 'hot takes on LinkedIn and email follow-ups' zone. And with Cannes looming large over creator economy conferences, there were a ton of takes to be taken. I'm mirroring the format of my last issue preparing for VidCon to talk about what I saw, what the leaders were talking about, and the future of the conference.

Your VidCon 2026 Survival Guide 🎪

Every year I write a version of this, but this year I wanted to dive deeper. Are you going? Do you know what you're going to do? Is everyone giving you bad advice? I won't. This is it. This is the whole game:

How Reps Actually Know What Brands Pay 🤫

There's FYPM, and it's essential, but what happens when deals aren't 'flat fee' anymore. There's no Glassdoor for brand deals. No Kelley Blue Book, no Zillow estimate telling you what a 1M-subscriber gaming creator's mid-roll is "worth." The entire pricing layer of this industry runs on backchannel texts and "hey, what'd they offer you?" DMs. And this week, a report dropped that's about to make that whisper network a lot harder to read.

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Agents, managers, and business-savvy creators! This newsletter will give you the top news, strategies, and interviews relevant to creator representatives from Phil Ranta, who has been a 'creator manager manager' for over a decade!