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On Monday, the internet’s highest earning digital creator, MrBeast, posted his first video on Twitter/X with a challenge to Elon Musk: “I’m curious how much ad revenue a video on X would make, so I’m reuploading this to test it,” he wrote above a reposted YouTube video where he essentially jams his buddies into the world’s most expensive cars.
MrBeast, aka Jimmy Donaldson – who earned $82 million in 2023, according to Forbes – had initially rejected overtures from Musk to join X’s new ad revenue sharing programme. “My videos cost millions to make and even if they got a billion views on X it wouldn’t fund a fraction of it,” he posted on X on 30 December. But last week Musk declared X was a “video first platform”, and MrBeast relented.
According to tech newsletter GarbageDay’s Ryan Broderick, “MrBeast finally soft-embracing X is useful for measuring X’s current level of decay” – if Donaldson’s ad revenue is significantly less than the video’s roughly $1 million he made when he first posted on YouTube, it undermines Musk’s whole pitch. He’s waiting to see the results on Monday.
The results are important for Musk, who confirmed a 60 per cent drop in X’s US advertising revenue in November. Twitter/X has been shedding users consistently since November 2022 according to data from ComScore – although numbers have surged since the conflict in Gaza began – and advertising agencies report clients are unwilling to use the platform because of the political drama Musk nowadays incites.
It also “doesn’t deliver the measurable results that make it too important to boycott,” says Joseph Teasdale, head of tech at Enders Analysis. He doesn’t think the MrBeast experiment will change that. “We’ve been unable to figure out Musk’s rewarding of creators, with many saying they’ve been paid vast amounts and others almost nothing.
There’s very little transparency at Twitter. If Musk is smart he will cut a big cheque for this video – something he seems very keen to do.” But if he does, does that solve the transparency problem? “It’s only if the numbers are terrible that you can be sure they’re the real thing.”