The world’s most popular YouTuber MrBeast has earned over £200,000 ($250,000) in ad revenue by posting an old video on to X, despite having previously criticised the platform.
The £200k payout reveals that the social media site – which has recently seen high-profile advertisers including IBM, Disney and the UK Government withdrawing from the site at a rapid rate – still has significant earning potential.
Best-known for the elaborate and expensive stunts often featured in his videos, MrBeast had prevoiously intimated that he considered posting on X to be a ‘waste of time’, due to the low levels of advertising revenue that the platform traditionally pays out to creators.
However, last week’s change of heart came about after the content creator, whose real name is Jimmy Donaldson, admitted that he was ‘curious’ about how truly profitable it would be to post a video on the Elon Musk-owned platform.
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The video in question, ‘$1 car vs $100,000,00 car’ which compares the various price point of luxury automobiles, has now generated more than 155 million views. The industry is watching it closely as a bellwether for X’s advertising struggles.
Musk has tried a variety of initiatives to change X’s struggling fortunes in recent months, including following YouTube’s lead in sharing advertising revenue with high-profile creators, although overall traffic to the site continues to fall.
MY FIRST X VIDEO MADE OVER $250,000! 😲
But it’s a bit of a facade. Advertisers saw the attention it was getting and bought ads on my video (I think) and thus my revenue per view is prob higher than what you’d experience pic.twitter.com/nViVpZbWBb
— MrBeast (@MrBeast) January 22, 2024
In a post on X, Donaldson pointed out that he believed the £200,000 figure to be “a bit of a facade”, adding: “advertisers saw the attention it was getting and bought ads on my video (I think) and thus my revenue per view is probably higher than what [other content creators] would experience.”
