MrBeast ran a Super Bowl ad for Salesforce at the weekend.

Full creative control. No agency. The same week, What Not, the live shopping app he ran a partnership with surged up the charts. The day after, he acquired a fintech company previously valued at nearly $1 billion.

He doesn't need to run ads. He is the distribution.

This is the Walt Disney playbook for 2025. Disney didn't just make films. He owned the parks, the merchandise, the TV network. He understood that controlling distribution meant controlling the economics.

MrBeast is building the same thing, just natively digital. Content funds attention. Attention funds products. Products fund more content. The flywheel doesn't need external advertising because the creator is the channel.

But this isn't just about one creator becoming a conglomerate. It's about what's happening to attention itself.

Look at the Super Bowl. Yes, live moments still matter. But increasingly, those moments are being sliced into micro-bets. In-game sports betting turns every play into a dopamine hit. People aren't just watching anymore, they're gambling on outcomes in real time.

The rise of Polymarket which lets you wager on anything is staggering.

Live. Interactive. Transactional. That's the new attention economy.

Shopping is going the same way. Live commerce turns browsing into entertainment. You're not scrolling through a catalogue. You're watching someone use the product, making the purchase feel like participation rather than transaction.

And underneath all of it, AI is accelerating everything. Adoption is happening faster than most companies can adapt.

The common thread: brand is the only moat left.

When AI can generate infinite content, when anyone can build products, when distribution is democratised, what remains scarce?

Trust. Recognition. A distinctive point of view that cuts through.

Whether it's a creator becoming a conglomerate, a bet placed on a micro-moment, or a purchase made during a livestream, the winners will be the ones people believe.

Everything else is just infrastructure.