---
title: 'Exposing Content Creation''s Biggest Scam'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=uA7BSn_2Kfc'
video_id: 'uA7BSn_2Kfc'
date: 2026-09-16
duration_sec: 852
channel: 'Devin Nash'
---

# Exposing Content Creation's Biggest Scam

> Source: [Exposing Content Creation's Biggest Scam](https://youtube.com/watch?v=uA7BSn_2Kfc)

## Summary

The speaker, a former talent agency owner, exposes the unethical practices prevalent in influencer talent agencies, particularly on Twitch, where agencies often underreport deal values to creators and pocket the difference. He explains his pivot to representing brands instead, emphasizing transparency and ethical business models, and concludes with a strong warning against signing exclusive talent agency contracts.

### Key Points

- **The Problem with Talent Agencies** [00:01] — The speaker explains that talent agencies are often ineffective and that dealing with influencers comes with unreasonable expectations, drama, and personal threats, making it a 'daycare' rather than a business.
- **A Cautionary Tale** [01:08] — He recounts a personal experience where an influencer he represented, despite a million-dollar Netflix deal, abused 15 women, causing him to lose $20,000 overnight in merch alone. This highlighted the enormous liability and low returns of representing talent.
- **The 20% Cap and Unethical Workaround** [01:37] — Talent agencies typically take up to 20% of a broadcaster's sponsorship deal value, capping their earnings. To increase margins, many agencies resort to unethical practices, such as underreporting deal values to creators and pocketing the difference.
- **The Common Scam: Underreporting Deal Values** [02:06] — The speaker details a widespread scam where an agency secures a $100,000 deal but tells the streamer it's only $20,000, knowing they'll accept it. The agency then collects the $80,000 difference plus 20% of the $20,000, significantly increasing their take-home pay.
- **Pivoting to Represent Brands** [03:34] — Unable to operate unethically, the speaker released all his talent and switched to representing brands. This model involves transparent fees paid by the brand, with no percentage taken from creators, offering higher margins and a more ethical approach.
- **The Brand-Side Business Model** [04:43] — As a brand agent, the speaker charges a transparent retainer fee to the brand and spends the ad budget as needed. He emphasizes that he takes zero money from creators, making it a more ethical system than the traditional talent agency model.
- **The Ongoing Problem with Talent Agencies** [05:26] — Even on the brand side, he must work with talent agencies that may still be unethical. He cites examples where agencies tell him not to talk to their talent, and he has encountered situations where he offers a $50,000 deal but the agency tells the creator it's $25,000, pocketing the difference.
- **Twitch's Predatory Culture** [07:08] — The speaker notes that this predatory behavior is essentially a Twitch problem, and he has reduced his ad spend on Twitch from over 90% to less than 5% due to these ethical concerns and poor return on investment.
- **YouTube vs. Twitch Ad Performance** [09:58] — He provides a stark comparison: for every one conversion from a Twitch ad, there are 200 to 20,000 from YouTube ads. This makes Twitch advertising, especially non-gaming, nearly worthless for his clients.
- **Kick's Potential and Limitations** [10:25] — The speaker has discussed with Kick's leadership and would spend $2-5 million with them if they had an ad system, but they currently lack the technology. He also notes that he wouldn't trust their KPIs and would use his own tracking.
- **Unsafe Brand Advertising** [11:32] — For brands that don't care about brand safety (e.g., crypto, adult content, casinos), he advertises on comedy podcasts and platforms like Rumble, which can deliver good numbers for the right demographic.
- **Twitch Ads: A Bad Investment** [12:00] — The speaker clarifies that he's not talking about Twitch's own ad breaks, which he considers insane to run. Instead, he refers to bounty board ads or direct sponsorships. He also mentions that Twitch's ad entry costs are unreasonably high, with a $200,000 minimum test campaign, making it impractical compared to Google's $500 test.
- **Agency Consolidation and Ethics** [13:35] — He notes that fewer agencies remain on Twitch, with consolidation by major players like Mythic and Loaded. He avoids working with most Twitch agencies due to ethical concerns, preferring platforms like YouTube for advertising.

### Conclusion

The speaker's core message is that talent agencies, especially exclusive ones, are often scams that exploit creators through unethical practices like underreporting deal values. He advocates for transparency and ethical business models, and warns creators to avoid signing exclusive contracts with talent agencies.

## Transcript

how much they're getting paid if all they did was they were just like hey can you show me the the contract that you signed with people think I'm running a talent agency I'm not running a talent agency I don't think talent agencies
work that well why story time so a couple years ago we were representing a and YouTube and I was looking at my business and I said I don't think we spiritual reason for not wanting to do it is that dealing with Talent I'm
trying to say this as respectfully as POS possible you guys are you guys know kind of influencer personalities right you kind of know how influencers are yeah so thank you very much for both the YouTube and twitch chat for saying the
stuff that I uh professionally am a little bit uh a little bit have to be a little bit careful with not interested in having a daycare I mean so uh let's just say that influencers have a lot of expectations from people they're doing
business with that  may be unreasonable add a bunch of drama to that mix add a bunch of personal threats and stalker stuff maybe add I was I had this influencer and like no word of a lie had this influencer like not done what they
million dollars with this influencer we Netflix deal like a ton of stuff and then that person abused like 15 women at once and I was like and I lost $20,000 overnight in merch alone okay after that
point I was like I am I am absorbing an enormous amount of liability from representing broadcas and I'm not getting a lot for it but and I'm not getting a lot for it but then I also have a implicit gate on how
much money I can make because the way you monetize as a talent agency is you you monetize as a talent agency is you take up to 20% of a broadcaster's take up to 20% of a broadcaster's sponsorship deal value so AKA if I get a
sponsorship for let's say like kaat for $100,000 obviously be like right I get $20,000 but the problem with this is that there  is no no way for me to get $40,000 or $50,000 or whatever unless so basically I can't increase my margins
unless I do something really shady here is what I do and this is happening across like 80 or 90% of twitch deals let's say that I get kaat a deal for $100,000 but he doesn't know the deal is $100,000 at the current moment in time
one that got the deal so I tell the streamer the deal value is $20,000 I tell him that because I know he'll take it so the actual deal value is $100,000
but I tell the streamer the deal value is $20,000 now let's say that I get an $100,000 deal this $100,000 deal here I get it for like a YouTuber or a or a twitch broadcaster who has like 2,000 concurrent subs  or something or viewers
or whatever they would be super happy with $20,000 they'd be ecstatic with 100,000 but I know they'll take the deal at 20,000 so I tell them the deal is 20,000 I collect $80,000 without anyone knowing because
the brand doesn't care cuz it's the same deal and then I also take 20% of the 20,000 okay so my total take-home as a talent agency just went from the $20,000 maximum right that I could make to literally making $80,000 plus 20 thou
plus 20% okay and that's how most talent agencies are operating on Twitch and on YouTube right now so I realized that the only way to increase my own take-home from my talent agency was to be super super unethical like unreasonably
unethical and I was not willing to make that decision I didn't want to do that so instead basically overnight We messaged all of our talent simultaneously and said you  are off contract go join other talent agencies
go do other stuff we can't find a way to do this ethically so you're free to go like do whatever you want and then we decided to represent the brand side of things instead so with the brand side of deals so now we work poor people like
Amazon the US Army Etc right and if Amazon gives us let's say like $500,000 in total ad budget I can now run that through X agencies y influencers uh Z
the brand side because they're the ones giving us the money and there's total transparency on the influencer side because we're the ones paying them directly and there's no split there's no percentage or anything like that so the
business model is much much more ethical and much better and the margins are much higher but most people can't represent Brands they can only represent talent because they're bad at doing business and so it's much easier to be unethical
and to monetize that way as the majority of town agencies do now sadly the the that we have now is  let's say that I have this total ad budget and I still need to go to a talent agency to act which happens a lot where does your cut
come from that as a brand agent the brand pays us a fee to do our work a fee and a retainer fee so the way that we do business now we literally take zero money from creators like and like that is like the most ethical I I I think I
can operate at we charge transparent fees to do the actual work to the brand and then we can spend the ad budget as we please up to the goals that we are trying to reach for that brand so I feel like this is a much better system than
um the system that we ran before the problem is that we still have to run through talent agencies so for example let's say that I want to do something unethical talent agency I actually don't personally know what their splits are so
as a random example because a lot of people know who otk is the problem is let's say that I'm going through a talent agency that does  this okay I can't stop them from taking that money out for creators and doing this bad deal
for those creators I just can't all all I have have is the money and a lot of times talent agencies they literally tell me they say don't talk to our talent we will talk to our talent like you you cannot so no no no no we can't
really unethical okay like if it's a good question though right if you sign with a talent agency and you're exclusive to those that talent agency I lot of bridges to do that by going directly to a Creator and saying hey we
have the money for you and a lot of times what will happen is we will um go to the talent we'll say hey we've got a $50,000 deal for you the talent agency told that talent that it was a $25,000 deal cuz they're collecting $25,000 off
the top and now there's a huge problem and and the reality is that talent again so they're being unethical but they punish us by getting their access to the talent and the real enemy in this OB obviously is the is the talent agency
the problem is that the Creator chooses to sign an exclusive contract with that about that so that's like unfortunately the only way we can really survive to be of the reasons why we don't deal with a lot of people on on Twitch anymore um
because most of the people on things like YouTube are just not dealing with is basically exclusively like a twitch problem where all this kind of predatory stuff is happening we would have to burn that Creator because that Creator signed
agency and we don't really have an option to do anything else talent agencies are a scam especially exclusive ones there are some exceptions including which agencies do scam deals like that are all of them like that I know exactly
what agencies do those deals I  can tell you the following if somebody is trying to get you to sign exclusively to a talent agency um don't do it do you blacklist talent agencies that you know operate like that no we can't like like
we we can't do that so like imagine that like you're a uh a you sell flour for dough okay and you know that 95% of bakeries are doing some serious scam shit like you still got to sell the flower like I can't like this might
sound like bad to you but I can't be responsible for a Creator signing a contract under a totally different company that can't be on me and then I these people are making that decision to get their they're not even going to like
these this Talent you've got to understand this talent doesn't even ask they're getting paid if all they did was they were just like hey can you show me the the contract that you signed with the brand to get paid what did you sign
they should be more than willing to do that but said the  talent is dumb yes getting at it's not my responsibility or like it ought not be right to like Blacklist every single talent agency that's unethical because I'd be
industry and then I'd be out of business so when I when I'm talking about this why I if people were here earlier in my broadcast I talked about how previously I was running over 90% of my income sorry my my Revenue my ad spend through
twitch and now I'm running less than 5% so this is a big reason why so so like I've not done it by not working with those agencies I've done it by switching platforms so I advertise on YouTube now I advertise on YouTube is our primary
think it's Tik Tok and then um it's like various other platforms so we no longer advertise on Twitch in part because we disagree with this philosophy of the Town agencies are doing um but also just because we um we  don't really get the
return on Advertising spend for our clients that we I would expect to be good there is no situation where I could run ads on Twitch and not do better on a platform like Google ads or AdSense or or or YouTube running ads on YouTube
on Twitch period end of story there would be like one or two exceptions to new game and you want a streamer to sponsor it and it kind of takes off but even games that like streamers have made and then promoted haven't gone anywhere
as at all and just to give you the ratio like let me just give you guys the ratio of YouTube ad conversions to a twitch conversions for every one person that the twitch ad there'll be 200 to do it on YouTube 200 20 so so like if I'm
going to advertise on Twitch and I'm going to do non-gaming advertising on Twitch you really have to ask yourself why if kick was able to run ads would you run ads I have talked to all of the highest level people at kick I have told
them right now if kick messaged me and said we have an ad system I would spend like 2 to 5 mil with them today I like I have the budget but they they they don't have the tech they they can't do it I have buckets of advertising to spend and
the the problem is most of my advertising spend has to be here in this green bucket which is like my brand safe bucket but I have a lot of other brands who are unsafe Brands who want to advertise places and want a test budget
and actually the place where I can get good Returns on investments for advertising on non um unsafe brand platforms is pretty and I would love to brands that can do it brands that that that that need the space and don't care
sophisticated enough ad system and I say sophisticated I I I mean it doesn't have an ad system you never advertise on Kick because you can't trust their kpis do you mean like their their like their data I wouldn't be using  their data like
would use our own affiliate codes and like like tracking and stuff like that to figure that out yeah so so funny enough like my not safe for work ad bucket is pretty much exclusively podcasts like com we we advertise a lot
on comedy podcasts what are some examples of unsafe Brands cryptocurrency stuff unsa uh uh adult stuff um web 3 stuff basically like people that don't care about like brand safety because they have no HR department Casinos
looked at truth social I actually don't know anything about that platform we've looked at Rumble um Rumble actually can put up some pretty good numbers if you demographic that it serves he's basically telling advertisers that
non-gaming advertising is worthless on Twitch yeah I am saying that that's so let me be really clear when I say twitch ads cuz cuz you just asked a good twitch ads cuz cuz you just asked a good question I am not saying I run so like
so you know the ads  that you guys see like the ad break that we just did I don't run those ads those are not the ads I'm talking about um anyone that runs Those ads is actually insane so what I'm talking about is like we would
either run a bounty board ad or we would directly sponsor Creator to do some kind of call to action or to be like involved in a product or service so I don't run ads um against twitch's actual ad back end I think I can't tell you why I don't
do it I think that there are a lot of NDA things with our agency relationship think I can say really generally that the cost of entering to run those ads on Twitch is really really high really
unreasonably high so let's say a brand comes to me and says I've got a million dollars to spend on ads and let's say that the minimum I can spend on Twitch numbers not isn't really so I would have to spend  $200,000 on a test campaign for
they'll talk to me to run an ad at that level why would I ever do that when I can go to Google spend $500 and know instantly what my ads are doing you see ads that way I think that's a very bad way to run ads I think that the people
that are running Those ads they're people who are very old school agencies Marketing so that's something that I avoid entirely um in the past years there's less agencies left on Twitch
it's just that the agencies have Consolidated like Mythic pretty much runs everything now and like loaded runs like some of that stuff that encompasses some of those agencies are deceiving their talent I'm not insinuating
anything um what I'm saying is that we are unwilling to work with the majority of twitch agencies because the  Эм, по этическим соображениям, можете веду свой бизнес, с удовольствием возвращаюсь и получаю от вас прямую и понятную
чувак, я просто хочу отдавать, приносить пользу. value [Music]