One of the world’s most popular YouTubers has revealed that he made over £200,000 in ad revenue by posting a video on X.
MrBeast is renowned for creating expensive videos, including competitions where contestants battle it out to win huge cash prizes.
While he has more than 233 million subscribers on YouTube, the influencer said he was curious to see how profitable it would be to post on Elon Musk’s platform.
The 25-year-old uploaded an old video called “$1 Car vs $100,000,000 Car” – comparing luxury motors at different price points.
Over three days, it generated 124 million views – generating $263,355 (£207,214) in revenue.
“But it’s a bit of a facade,” MrBeast told his 26.6 million followers on X. “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.”
The star is now vowing to give away the ad revenue, meaning 10 random followers will receive £20,000 each.
Musk has been attempting to entice X users to sign up for a premium subscription service by promising them a share of ad revenues.
But at the end of December, MrBeast had suggested he was reluctant to share his videos on the social network.
At the time, he had written: “My videos cost millions to make and even if they got a billion views on X it wouldn’t fund a fraction of it.”
While YouTube videos can continue to generate healthy views for weeks on end, content on X tends to lose momentum as its algorithms prioritise newer content.
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Some X users have claimed that MrBeast’s video has popped up in their feed multiple times as an unlabelled advert – despite the fact they don’t follow the influencer.
A view of his post by NBC News, Sky News’ US partner, found X users had the option to select “Not interested in this ad” when it appeared – an option not typically available on posts that aren’t ads.
MrBeast – whose real name is Jimmy Donaldson – and X didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
Since Musk introduced the ability for the public to see how many times posts are viewed, some users have questioned how useful the metrics are and whether they’re misleading.
Unlike YouTube view metrics, which show how many times users have actually watched a part of a video, X metrics show how many times a post was viewed in total, even if a user didn’t engage with or click on it at all.
