Online Learning in a Creator Economy
Abstract
The creator economy is revolutionizing the way in which individuals can profit from their engagement with online platforms. In this paper, we initiate the formal study of online learning in a creator economy by modeling it as a three-party game between users, a platform, and content creators. The platform interacts with creators through contracts under a principal-agent framework and with users via a recommender system. We study how the platform can jointly optimize contracts and recommendation policies in an online learning setting. We analyze return-based and feature-based contracts. Under smoothness assumptions, return-based contracts achieve regret$\Theta(T^{2/3})$. For feature-based contracts, we introduce an intrinsic dimension$d$and prove a regret bound$\mathcal{O}(T^{(d+1)/(d+2)})$, which is tight for linear families.
Fields of Study & Subjects
Auction Theory and Applications
FinTech
Crowdfunding
Digital Finance
Blockchain Technology Applications and Security
Publication details
- Journal / source
- Artificial Intelligence Science and Engineering
- Publisher
- Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)
- Volume
- 2
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 36–48
- Publication date
- 1 March 2026
- Language
- EN