Elon Musk's X (formerly Twitter) has allegedly been promoting the first directly posted video on the platform by Jimmy Donaldson, popularly known as MrBeast.
What Happened: Last weekend, MrBeast, a well-known YouTuber, posted a video titled "$1 Car vs $100,000,000 Car!!!" on X, saying that he intends to test “how much ad revenue a video on X would make.”
Now, X users have reported seeing this video, labeled as a “test,” multiple times in their feeds without any clear “ad” or “promoted” tag. This led one user to suggest that it is an unlabeled advertisement, as it lacked the usual timestamp and ad indicators, reported Mashable.
The issue of unlabeled ads on X emerged following Musk’s acquisition of the platform in October 2022 for a whopping $44 billion.
Previously, it was reported that since September last year, the platform has been displaying unlabeled ads to users without the customary “ad” or “promoted” tag. These ads do not have the usual post date seen on organic posts.
Check My Ads, an ad-tech watchdog earlier filed a complaint against X with the FTC over this labeling issue.
However, an X employee suggested that a labeled pre-roll video ad appearing before MrBeast's video is considered as the disclosure, thus explaining the lack of an “ad” or “promoted” label on MrBeast's post, the report noted, citing Ryan Broderick, who writes "Garbage Day" newsletter.
Why It Matters: Despite the controversy, at the time of writing, the video had received over 138.4 million views on X. However, it’s likely these “views” are just impressions on the post itself and not the number of people who actually watched MrBeast’s video.
In May, Musk directed X to remove the public video view count feature from the platform, making it uncertain how many actual views a video receives on X. MrBeast has pledged to disclose how much he earns from X’s monetization program from this test, leaving users eagerly awaiting the results.
MrBeast has previously stated that the compensation from X would not cover a fraction of his video production costs. Despite this, he decided to test the ad revenue potential on X by uploading a video directly to the platform.
In his latest post regarding the video, MrBeast conducted a poll on the platform, asking his 25.4 million followers, "How much revenue do you think my post on here with 124,000,000 views made?"
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Photo by Leon Lush via Wikimedia Commons
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