MrBeast uploads first video to X to test out ad revenue
MrBeast may be the king of YouTube, but now he’s trying out something new with his content: Cross-posting his YouTube videos directly to Elon Musk’s social media platform, X.
On Monday night, MrBeast, who is also known by his real name Jimmy Donaldson, uploaded a video directly to the Musk-owned social media platform for the very first time.
“$ 1 Car vs $ 100,000,000 Car!!!” posted MrBeast, sharing the title of the video alongside the full 16 and a half minute upload. “I’m curious how much ad revenue a video on X would make so I’m reuploading this to test it. Will share ad rev next week.”
Musk immediately shared MrBeast’s post to his more than 169 million followers.
“First MrBeast video posted directly on 𝕏!” Musk posted.
MrBeast’s about-face
The owner of the platform formerly known as Twitter has been quite active over the past year in reaching out to notable creators, podcasters, and political commentators on X, and asking that they upload their content to the site. In fact, Musk has previously replied to a few public posts from other users who had asked MrBeast to upload his videos to X, adding extra encouragement to their requests.
MrBeast’s recent decision to upload directly to X is an interesting one as he had been vocal about why he had not previously done so. In one post on X from Dec. 30, MrBeast replied directly to Musk and explained why he was hesitant to upload his content to the site.
“My videos cost millions to make and even if they got a billion views on X it wouldn’t fund a fraction of it,” MrBeast said, adding a frowning smiley face. “I’m down though to test stuff once monetization is really cranking!”
YouTube has long-been the best platform for creators looking to directly monetize their content based on revenue share. As of now, no other social platform – and X is certainly included – has been able to provide its users with such a lucrative revenue model based on ad share monetization.
But, roughly two weeks later, MrBeast is now running such a test.
The results for MrBeast are “fixed”
It certainly will be interesting to see how MrBeast fares when it comes to monetization on X. As of publication, MrBeast’s video upload post has over 27,000 retweets and more than 277,000 likes. The MrBeast post containing the video embed has been viewed more than 68 million times as of this writing. (Note: X does not show how many times the video itself has been viewed. Musk removed this metric, which was previously public, last Spring.)
However, X’s monetization rules only count views from X Premium subscribers. This means that unless a user who views the content is paying $ 8 per month (or $ 16 per month for X Premium+) for X’s subscription service, a view from that user will not count towards a creators’ monetization.
With all that said, MrBeast will very likely receive a large payout from X.
Due to that monetization policy, payout amounts seem arbitrarily counted on the platform. For example, when the monetization program first launched, Musk’s favorite accounts, a group made up primarily of right-wing political commentators, influencers, and meme accounts, made as much as tens of thousands of dollars from a single payout.
On the contrary, when the monetization program widened to a broader pool of users, even popular accounts on the platform found that their highly viewed content generated much less than those highly publicized large payouts to Musk’s favorite posters.
Musk has a lot riding on the idea that MrBeast’s content will thrive on X, so it wouldn’t be surprising to see the platform paying him out beyond what revenue is actually generated from the revenue share.
In addition, MrBeast has pre-roll video ads displayed on his uploaded content. This is part of a pre-Musk program known as Amplify that’s not available for most X users. Before Musk came along with his own monetization program, selected publishers were getting paid by then-Twitter for running video ads that displayed before their own video content. X has continued running that program, and it still appears to be unavailable for most users.
Furthermore, the ecommerce company Shopify has shared that they are running video ads specifically on MrBeast’s X video. This basically guarantees MrBeast’s X video will be monetized on multiple fronts, and in ways that most creators cannot monetize on X.
However, while this experiment will have enlightening results for MrBeast, it’s very clearly not an example of the broader creator monetization experience on X.