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.
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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.
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.
It is “pretty surreal”, Academy Award winner Reese Witherspoon admits, finding herself at the top of The New York Times bestsellers list.
When I meet the actress alongside her co-writer, best-selling author Harlan Coben, overnight the pair have learned that their thriller is now at number one.
He jokes: “I was texting her last night and saying you’ll now have to call yourself number one bestselling novelist, forget about Oscar winner!”
Image: Reese Witherspoon and Harlan Coben told Katie Spencer about their novel Gone Before Goodbye
As one of the most successful authors in the world, Coben has sold over 80 million books to date, while for Witherspoon this is new ground.
Not content with running a hugely successful production company responsible for a string of hits, as well as one of the most successful book clubs in the world, she explains she felt compelled to give writing a try.
“People want you to stay in your lane… as a creative person I think it’s impossible to just choose one kind of life.
“Creativity is infinite and who I was as a creative person when I was 20 is very different from the person I am now at 49.”
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Gone Before Goodbye, a thriller about a talented surgeon who finds herself caught up in a deadly conspiracy, is the result of Witherspoon daring to put her head above the parapet.
Image: Witherspoon says she felt compelled to give writing a try
Coben admits he was “a little wary” at first.
“I don’t co-write novels but when she made the pitch and started talking about it, I was like ‘dang that’s good, we can do something with that’.”
While countless celebrities work with ghostwriters, Coben says: “I said to her from day one ‘it’s only going to be you and me in here… no third person in here, I don’t do that’. So every word you [read] comes from Reese and me.”
Image: Coben has sold over 80 million books to date, while for Witherspoon this is new ground
Witherspoon explains: “He was like ‘if we’re going to do this, it’s going to have to be at a really high level because people going to expect a lot, so our bar was really high.”
“I said to her, in the beginning, novels are like a sausage,” Coben laughs. “You might like the final taste, but you don’t want to see how it was made and Reese got to see the full sausage getting made here.”
When it came to writing, Coben says they “fell into a rhythm right away”, working together in three-hour stints, “back and forth with a yellow legal pad – what about this? What about that?”
Image: Coben says they ‘fell into a rhythm right away’
Witherspoon says it “feels really deeply personal” to have their work now in print.
“Usually, as an actor, I walk into other people’s worlds and it’s already set up… but this was creating the whole world with Harlan and just from beginning to end feels very personal.”
While the story seems an obvious fit for being adapted to the screen, perhaps with a certain blonde actress in the leading role, Coben says that was never their intention.
“The biggest, biggest mistake novelists make when you write a book is to say ‘this would make a really great movie’. A book is a book, a movie is a movie, and we both focused on wanting this to be just a great reading experience.”
Given that their collaboration is already selling in big numbers, will the pair team up again to write a second?
Witherspoon says: “Let’s just see what people think of this one first.”
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Associate professor of neurology Dr Laura Stein told Sky’s US partner NBC News: ” The most well-described risk factors include a predisposition [family history of aneurysm], high blood pressure, cigarette smoking and inflammation.”
She went on to explain that most fatal ruptured aneurysms are in the brain, killing about one in three patients.
“When it’s a blood vessel that’s in the head and it bleeds, there’s a much higher risk of having a very bad problem just because the brain is enclosed in a fixed space,” Dr Stein added.
Low-risk aneurysms are monitored by doctors for growth or abnormalities, and there are a series of potential treatment options for those considered dangerous.
Elsewhere in The Kardashians clip, Kim admitted that her ex-husband Kanye West will be in her life “no matter what” because of the four kids they share together.