Advertising needs to stop interrupting what people are interested in and instead, create what…

Advertising needs to stop interrupting what people are interested in and instead, create what people are interested in.

A leaked document put together by Mr Beast on “How to succeed in Mr Beast production" has been released, and it’s a fascinating rulebook on how to build a billion-dollar media empire.

A lot can be taken from his approach to branded content.

Ultimately, people don't want to watch ads, they want to be entertained.

It’s no secret that consumers hate the majority of advertising, 93% of YouTube ads are skipped.

Some brands look to do one better by sponsoring a creator's video, but the majority still miss the mark when it comes to making branded content that people actually want to watch.

Mr Beast takes a different approach, as he outlines below:

“If you watch a lot of YouTube you’ll probably notice that when someone does a brand deal it’s boring and sounds like they’re reading a script.

We take a different approach to brand deals, we like to integrate them into the content so it doesn’t nuke our retention and boosts conversion.

Remember that I told you we could see the exact moment when viewers click off our videos?

Here is a retention chart for when we used to do brand deals the old way.

Notice the crater where the brand deal is, that means people skipped it and also clicked off the video.

Now here is a retention chart with a new style brand deal in it.

The dip is way less dramatic and for the most part, something I can live with to help fund the videos.

BRAND DEALS ARE CONTENT!

And when treated as such boosts retention. We need to make them entertaining.

Also, fun fact, the last CEO who sponsored a video said that the return was 1.7x the return they get on an NFL championship game ad.

He said with an NFL commercial you get a giant spike of customers on day one and then it disappears forever after that whereas with a brand deal with us, you get a huge spike for a few days and then it settles down and then a respike when we upload again (because after they watch the new video they go back and watch the video before it) and even after that our videos typically get a million views+ a month for years.

Aka tons of residual customers.”

For anyone interested in creating better content, organic or paid, the full document is a must-read, it sets a standard of excellence that very few companies have and breaks down the process of virality into a science, not just an art.

In a world of growing noise, I think paid media is becoming less important.

To win in the attention economy, you don't fight for attention by simply buying it... you captivate it.

The challenge is earning it.

Mr Beast is the master at this and there is a lot as an industry we can learn from him.