Marc Hustvedt, president of Mr Beast — not Mr Beast himself — told the Cannes Lions crowd that X, née Twitter, was the only platform that delivered the world’s most popular YouTube growth in his native US market.
Hustvedt, who had previously served as a partner at Reach agency and as CEO of React Media, was in conversation with Linda Yaccarino, CEO of X, on the Terrace stage in the Palais.
“X is my [favourite platform],” said Hustvedt.
“Jimmy [Donaldson aka Mr Beast] tweeted that he had over a million dollars in revenue just dropping [his] videos on [X]. It’s an interesting distribution strategy, especially when an advertiser is a part of it because it helps actually increase US audience — and that’s always one thing that we struggle with.
“We’re growing so much ex-US because the world is growing ex-US but you still have these myopic US companies asking how big the US audience is. Now, we’re like, ‘Look what we’re doing on X’ and I personally want to study and do more on this.”
Recent brand partners of Mr Beast include water bottle company Cirkul and Moose Toys. Cirklu promises that its “innovative” bottle will allow you to “flavor your water sip by sip.” On its website, Mr Beast said its “Makes water taste good.”
Moose Toys, meanwhile, has partnered with Mr Beast “to create an entirely new brand” that is expected to debut later this year.
Yaccarino, who at the top of the sessions described herself as “not Elon,” said that X was a new company taking a “different approach to the mature market” of online video.
Elon Musk, who purchased Twitter for some $US44 billion ($AU65 billion) in October 2022 before rebranding it to X, has been on a mission to get creators posting on the platform and has introduced a creator fund to reward content that garners lots of engagement.
Last month, Mr Beast reposted a six-month-old video from YouTube to Twitter and it garnered 127.7 million views, according to X’s public tracker, along with more than 5,000 replies, nearly 8,000 reposts, 112,000 favourites and 10,000 saves. On YouTube, it currently has 177 million views.
I Buried Myself Alive For A Week! Enjoy watching me suffer pic.twitter.com/L97Rrlueqa
— MrBeast (@MrBeast) June 7, 2024
Yaccarino, who had served as NBCUniversal’s chair, global advertising and partnerships, said that the growth of Mr Beast showed a paradigm shift in the way the media world works.
“I come from mostly a legacy media experience where everything was about exclusivity. That’s where the power plates have shifted into the creators’ hands. That’s what partly drew me to X because we could talk to Elon about what the future was going to look like and how we’re building video on the platform. So from 2007, now look where we are,” she said.
“The biggest differentiator is that it’s direct to consumer. Think about that. Direct to consumer, you’ve also flipped the model of building brand and building product.”
Hustvedt said that now was “the best time in the world for creators” adding that while many of the “first generation” tried to move to LA and get into Hollywood, there is a new crop that “aren’t trying to make a movie.”
“These are moguls building billion-dollar CPG brands, Prime [the drink company founded by YouTubes KSI and Logan Paul] announced $1.05 billion in sales, we’re very close to that with Feastibles. These aren’t little LTO one-off drops. These are taking meaningful share from incumbents. You either learn to fish or you’re going to get competed-out.”
Is this a new dawn for the media industry and its relationship with advertisers? Yaccarino and Hustvedt certainly seem to think so.
