MrBeast Takes Out Online Ads to Wish Himself Happy Birthday

It's an unwritten rule in some crankier circles online that after 21, your birthdays should be quiet, humble affairs shared with friends and family. Sure, there can be some exceptions for the big ones. But in this day and age, it could be seen as a bit ostentatious to make a spectacle out of, say, your 27th birthday.

That's evidently not a rule Jimmy "MrBeast" Smith follows, if his birthday posts are any indication.

Earlier today, the YouTube mogul took out an ad campaign on X-formerly-Twitter to wish himself a happy 27th trip around the Sun.

"Happy Birthday MrBeast!" the simple post read.

Thanks to his self-promotion, the post gathered nearly 2.5 million views in just under six hours. The replies were full of well-wishers from accounts like ALF Token — an ALF themed cryptocurrency — to @GodsPURP0SE, who wrote "Happy Birthday Dude!! Love your content and what you do for people in need around the world. God bless you and your journey through life."

There were plenty of critics, too, who likely only saw the post thanks to Smith's boost. "Did you really buy an ad so people can say happy birthday to you?" one poster asked. "Is that like not weird to you?"

Advertising on X-formerly-Twitter is a costly move — likely one of the reasons Musk is struggling to sell ads. Though we don't know if MrBeast made any back-door marketing deals to post content on Elon Musk's social media platform, we do know that most promoted ads cost between $0.26-$1.50 per action, according to WebFX, a digital marketing blog.

With over 49,000 likes, 6,500 comments and 3,500 retweets at the time of writing, we can estimate this birthday post cost somewhere between $15,340 on the low end, to a whopping $88,500 on the high end. And that's just in the first six hours.

Again, this is assuming Musk didn't put his fingers on the scale. In 2023, it was revealed that MrBeast was one of a handful of VIP accounts secretly boosted by Musk, who had recently taken over the platform. Those VIP accounts had their posts pushed to the top, however, in a way that made them look organic — no "ad" tag like the one plastered on Smith's birthday post.

What followed Musk's takeover was nothing short of a mass exodus of advertisers from the platform.

By September 2024, only 4 percent of marketers polled said that X provided brand safety as the platform became overrun with extremists, spam bots, and conspiracy cranks. That fall-off in ad revenue came with a rise in low-rent junk ads by dropshipping companies and Neo-nazis (Musk is reportedly recruiting PR specialists to help reform the brand image of the ailing platform.)

More recently, Smith teased that he "might actually own this platform soon," after Musk volunteered to be part of a "100 men vs 1 gorilla" MrBeast video.

Unfortunately for those fed up with the billionaire's reign over the social media app, those comments were definitely tongue-in-cheek — Musk probably won't be handing over the keys anytime soon.

Still, it'd make a great present for the birthday boy.

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