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Jimmy Donaldson, better known as MrBeast, YouTube’s most popular creator with 233 million subscriber, announced that he he earned $263,655 by re-posting one of his car-related videos on Elon Musk’s social media platform, X (formerly Twitter). However, he acknowledges that these numbers may be “a bit of a facade,” and were probably somewhat inflated and not entirely accurate.

MrBeast posted an older piece of content that he had previously published on YouTube to X last week, in order to see “how much ad revenue a video on X would make.” The post featured Donaldson and his friends driving cars varying in value from $1 to $100,000,000.

According to MrBeast’s statement on X, the video garnered over 156 million impressions (now at 161 million as of January 23) and 5 million engagements, resulting in $263,655 in revenue. This translates to an effective CPM (Cost Per Mille or Cost Per Thousand) rate of $1.69.

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MrBeast Makes $260,000 On Elon Musk’s X With A Car Video After 161 Million Views

CPM is a common metric in advertising and digital marketing, representing the cost for an advertiser to reach 1,000 ad views. For example, a $1.69 CPM means paying $1.69 for 1,000 ad views. Masahble reports that the same video on YouTube earned MrBeast $167,000 in revenue after 77 million views, so if you do the math, that results in a higher CPM of $2.17.

Read: Tesla Appears To Be Looking For Any Way It Can To Waste Money On X

There’s reason for other creators to be skeptical about these figures, though. Firstly, even Donaldson admits that the mere fact that YouTube’s biggest creator posted on X attracted advertisers. That means that he is likely getting more revenue per view than what others should expect.

Additionally, Musk has been actively courting Donaldson, attempting to get him on the platform. The YouTube creator previously rebuffed X’s advances over doubts about his ability to make money on the platform, giving it clear motive to hand over as much revenue as possible, in order to win him over.

MrBeast Makes $260,000 On Elon Musk’s X With A Car Video After 161 Million Views

For instance, the dashboard showing the impressions, engagements, and revenue is different than that shown to X Premium or X Premium+ users, who are likely to be the ones using X to post video. Instead, MrBeast’s analytics page looks more like the one offered to Amplify users, an invite-only tier reserved for X’s largest publishers.

Finally, MrBeast’s decision to post on X has received significant promotion from himself, the official X account, and Elon Musk. It was also being pushed into users’ feeds as an unlabeled ad, as reported by Mashable. This may explain the high number of impressions, which measures the frequency of it appearing in users’ feeds.

For X, poaching YouTube’s biggest creator, and attracting more noteworthy people to its site may be existentially important. Since being purchased by Musk, user rates on the social media platform have plummeted and advertisers have been scared off by his conduct. Whether Donaldson’s revenue figures reflect reality is likely less important than whether they tempt other creators and their viewers to post content to the site.

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