MrBeast's experiment with publishing videos on X now has a definitive finding based on data – it's more profitable for content creators to post their videos on Alphabet Inc.'s (NASDAQ:GOOG) (NASDAQ:GOOGL) YouTube than on Elon Musk's X.
What Happened: Jimmy Donaldson, aka MrBeast, recently revealed that his "$1 Car vs $100,000,000 Car!!!" video on X earned him $263,665 in ad revenue as part of the social media platform's ad revenue sharing program.
While Donaldson has stated that X's ad revenue compensation "wouldn't fund a fraction" of the costs he incurs in making those videos, we now have data to back it up.
According to data shared by YouTube CEO Neal Mohan, the video streaming platform has paid out over $70 billion to creators over the past three years.
On average, YouTube has paid over $1.94 billion per month during this period.
This is in sharp contrast with X's ad revenue compensations. According to the most recent data shared by X CEO Linda Yaccarino, the microblogging platform has paid nearly $20 million to content creators until September 2023.
Note that this data is only for the first two months of the ad revenue-sharing program, officially launched in July 2023. This means X has paid out an average of $10 million monthly to its creators until September 2023.
This is significantly less than YouTube, which paid an average of $1.94 billion per month over the past three years.
Essentially, if a content creator posted the same video on YouTube and X, they could earn 194 times more on YouTube than X.
Why It Matters: Musk has been trying to boost engagement and other metrics on X with various new announcements. This includes sharing ad revenue with content creators and tying it to paid subscription services to encourage users to directly pay money for using X.
Moreover, it has been alleged that Musk resharing MrBeast's video may have artificially boosted its reach and, therefore, the revenue he earned from it. Most other users might not get this boost, so their earnings might be lower.
While MrBeast's official YouTube earnings details are unavailable, according to Social Blade data, he is estimated to have earned between $456,400 and $7.3 million in the last month. His annual earnings range between $5.5 million to $87.6 million.
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