Refusing to be hampered by manual processes and inefficient workflows that often plague influencer marketing, Clicks Talent has invested $250,000 of its own capital in building a new platform, Zano, that aims to reshape how brands connect with digital creators. This self-funded initiative addresses persistent challenges in influencer marketing, potentially creating a new revenue stream for the seven-year-old agency.

“I’ve wanted a tool like this for over six years—something I could use to run influencer marketing more efficiently, generate recurring revenue, and actually scale operations,” says Clicks Talent CEO Abraham Lieberman, describing the motivation behind the investment. “When Sapir [Tori, former Clicks Talent COO & Business Development Manager and CEO of Zano] came to me with the idea, I immediately saw the potential. This is exactly the kind of product this industry has been missing.”

The decision to self-fund rather than pursue external investment came from a position of confidence. With Clicks Talent generating over $5 million in annual revenue and facilitating connections between major brands, such as Sony Pictures, Amazon Music, and Uber Eats, and over 5,000 influencers across more than 60 countries, the company had both the capital and industry expertise to back this new venture.

“Zano has only been live for six months, and it’s already near profitability,” Abraham notes. “It’s growing fast, it’s being used daily by our team and by hundreds of other agencies, and it’s proving its value in real time.”

Building Zano

The majority of the $250,000 investment was allocated directly to product development, resulting in the creation of Zano, a platform designed to enhance the scalability of influencer marketing operations. The investment specifically addressed a key challenge Abraham had experienced firsthand: the inefficiency of connecting brands with the right creators quickly and at scale.

“When a client comes to me needing creators fast, I always turn to agencies—because I know they’ll deliver. But historically, that process has been manual, slow, and full of back-and-forth,” Abraham explains. “With Zano, I now have hundreds of agency rosters at my fingertips, and I can launch casting calls that get relevant submissions within hours. Even more importantly, I get immediate access to each creator’s stats, demographics, and pricing—which means I’m making calculated decisions instantly, without having to wait days for someone to send a PDF or respond to a DM.”

What made this investment particularly efficient was Sapir Tori’s background in UX/UI design, which allowed her to design the entire platform herself. “That not only saved a significant amount but ensured the platform was intuitive, clean, and built with creators and managers in mind from day one,” Abraham notes.

The platform’s core functionality transforms Zano from just another tool into a marketplace that connects talent agencies directly with brands and marketing agencies. “Talent agencies get familiar tools like media kits and roster management, but they’re also plugged into a live ecosystem that connects them directly with brands and marketing agencies,” Abraham explains.

The platform offers several features that directly address industry inefficiencies:

• Instant Talent Profiles: A Talent agency drops in their influencer’s link, and Zano pulls real-time data—followers, views, engagement, demographics, etc. That auto-generates a media kit they can share as a single profile or an entire roster.
  
• Auto-Updating Media Kits: Since the data is live, talent agencies don’t need to update PDFs or chase creators for new screenshots. Brands have access to accurate and current metrics at all times.
  
• Comprehensive Creator Search: On the brand side, marketers can freely search across all live rosters using filters, keyword search, and sortable tables—much like a discovery tool, but built on top of real agency relationships.
  
• Efficient Casting Calls: Brands can post casting calls detailing what they need—region, niche, deliverables, and budget. Those calls are automatically distributed to all relevant talent agencies on Zano.

In one early success story, Clicks Talent connected with marketing agency People First through the platform for a campaign with a cancer nonprofit. The collaboration led to the selection of creator Philecia LaBounty, whose personal experience as a cancer patient made for an authentic campaign that generated 19,000 views with a 3% engagement rate.

Measuring Success and Future AI Development

Just six months after launch, the platform has already gained traction with hundreds of agencies using the system daily. Abraham has set clear targets to measure the investment’s full impact over the coming year. 

“Success a year from now would mean that Zano has firmly established itself as the go-to infrastructure for talent and marketing agencies working in influencer marketing,” he explains. “From a metrics standpoint, I’d expect to see at least 500 talent agency users managing a combined 20,000+ influencer profiles and 300 brand users generating a minimum of $50,000 in monthly recurring revenue.”

The development plan extends beyond the current functionality, with resources being directed toward the addition of artificial intelligence. “Zano is actively working on integrating AI and automation to make both creator-brand matchmaking and campaign planning more intelligent and efficient,” Abraham explains. 

The AI development follows a two-phase approach, beginning with a proprietary “Zano Score” that will evaluate creators beyond basic metrics by analyzing engagement patterns, audience relevance, growth trends, and content performance.

The second phase focuses on campaign building: “A marketing user will be able to input their campaign goals—audience, budget, vertical, location, etc.—and the system will use AI to recommend the best-fit influencers across the marketplace, the most relevant agencies to partner with, and an optimized campaign structure based on what’s worked for similar brands or objectives,” Abraham describes. 

This approach uses AI to enhance human strategy rather than replace it, providing better matches, faster insights, and more informed decisions throughout the system.

Industry Changes and Future Direction

Clicks Talent’s internal investment comes at a pivotal point in the creator economy, acknowledging current market shifts that make this technology increasingly relevant. 

“More brands are investing in influencer marketing now, which on the surface sounds great. But what’s really happening is that a lot of these brands are also moving influencer work in-house,” Abraham explains. “On the one hand, there’s technically more work out there—just a much larger pool of brands running campaigns. But on the other hand, a smaller percentage of those brands are open to hiring external partners like us.”

As Abraham points out, this industry shift presents both challenges and possibilities. The increase in in-house teams often leads to inefficiency, as many lack specialized knowledge of influencer marketing. 

“The bigger issue is that many of these in-house teams lack experience. They’re jumping into influencer marketing without really understanding how it works—no background, no strategy, no clue,” he observes. “We’re seeing a rise in difficult clients who want full creative control, offer extremely low rates, and expect premium results without understanding the value behind what they’re asking for.”

By investing in improving the workflow between brands, agencies, and creators, Clicks Talent is addressing a clear market need while establishing itself in a competitive field. “This investment is helping us redefine what it means to be a creator agency by shifting the model from people-heavy and manual to tech-enabled and scalable,” Abraham explains. “We’re giving agencies and managers the tools to operate like tech companies—faster, leaner, and more performance-driven.”

For Abraham, this investment represents more than just a business opportunity—it’s part of a broader plan to enhance the functioning of the creator economy. “One change I’d love to see in the creator economy over the next five years is a standardized, transparent infrastructure that empowers creators to build real, sustainable businesses without being taken advantage of at every turn,” he shares.

Through this internal investment, Clicks Talent is working to address common challenges in the creator economy, with a clear focus on creating value for brands while helping creators build stable careers. “Our mission is to create infrastructure that supports all of that—so creators aren’t just surviving deal to deal, but actually thriving,” Abraham emphasizes.

As Clicks Talent continues to develop, Abraham sums up their direction in three words: “Growth. Transparency. World-Domination.”