Hi and welcome back to another edition of our newsletter. This week: Jimmy Donaldson (MrBeast) averages 200 million views per video. He's spent years as the supply side of creator-brand deals. Now Beast Industries is building a marketplace to connect Fortune 1000 advertisers with Creators. More below.

— Kole

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Jimmy Donaldson, better known as MrBeast, has built Beast Industries into a $5.2 billion company with plans to go public. Now he's entering ad tech.

The company currently spans two divisions. Media includes YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, and Beast Games, which became the number one show in over 80 countries on Prime Video. Media accounts for half of revenue. The other existing division is consumer products, which includes Feastables chocolate, a top-selling action figure, lunch snacks, plus upcoming Beast Mobile and financial services.

But it's the third division that Beast Industries CEO Jeffrey Housenbold seems most excited about: a creator marketplace. At last week's DealBook Summit, he described "building a two-sided marketplace in a global creator platform, matching creators with Fortune 1000 marketers who want to be able to access the creator influencer economy in an efficient way to be able to build demand for their products and services."

As Donaldson put it in an earlier interview: "Everyone knows instead of buying a YouTube ad that's skippable, paying the creator directly to promote your product would convert much better." So he's building the infrastructure himself.

The timing makes sense. U.S. ad spending on creators is projected to hit $37 billion this year, up 26% year-over-year and growing four times faster than the broader media industry, according to a November IAB report.

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You’re caught up 
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Written (in travel mode) from Abuja, Nigeria