Top 5 Branded Videos of the Week: Dave Ramsey vs 100,000 bees

Welcome to our rundown of the most-watched branded YouTube videos of the week.

We’re publishing this snippet of a larger Gospel Stats Weekly Brand Report in order to analyze sponsorship trends in the creator economy. Any video launched in tandem with an official brand partner is eligible for the ranking.

And – as the name up above would imply – all the data comes from Gospel Stats. If you’re interested in learning more about Gospel – and which brands are sponsoring what creators on YouTube – click here.

Is Dave Ramsey becoming the next MrBeast? OK, we kid, but really: financial guru Ramsey is once again on the rise, making our list twice this week. That’s because he’s blitzing YouTube with short content to the tune of ~30 videos a week. What’s interesting is he’s not the only one on the rise. The rest of our top 5 this week is made up of newcomers–creators who haven’t been at the top of the list before, but arrive this week pulling big views for their sponsoring brands.

Check ’em all out here:

#1 I let an AI Robot clean my pool…👀😳 (ruined)
Channel: Kaz Sawyer
Brand: Aiper
Views: 10,530,146

The first newcomer this week is Kaz Sawyer, and we want to clarify that when we say “newcomer,” we just mean to the top 5 of our Gospel Stats Weekly Brand Reports. Sawyer has been uploading to his channel since 2018, and has settled firmly into the tech bro/14-year-old boy view-bait niche, with videos like I Sent A NFT To Space! and I Crashed The Worlds FASTEST Golf Cart [sic]. He made our Report this week with a Short where, after giving his luxury pool a rough go for the Vine, he brings in Aiper‘s $1,800 pool cleaning robot to do its best scrub-up. Aiper is, of course, the video’s sponsor, and timed this partnership for Prime Day, where it was offering various models up to $800 off. Here’s something interesting: In the video description, Sawyer didn’t plug a link directly to the product; instead, he specifically encouraged viewers to search “Aiper Scuba X1 Pro Max” on Amazon. Maybe a way to inflate traffic? 🤔

#2 Raising 10,000 Bees (in my home)
Channel: Dr. Plants
Brand: Opera
Views: 7,029,949

There’s a joke here somewhere about Dr. Plants being 10,000 bees in a trenchcoat. That being said, we’re bee-yond pleased to welcome him as our second Weekly Brand Report newcomer. He’s also somewhat of a YouTube newcomer, having just started his channel in 2022. From then to now, he’s uploaded 11 videos, all of them long-form. Wait, you think. Just 11? Yep. Just 11. And that’s because his videos document year (and sometimes years)-long projects recreating the cycles of nature in bioactive vivariums. He fills massive tanks with earth, plants, and animals at all levels of the food chain, and simulates natural events like weather patterns that would affect them out in the real world, then records how these miniature universes progress.

In this video, Dr. Plants brings in browser Opera to support one of his biggest projects yet: a bee colony that spent 100 days living in his house. Will it end in delicious honey, or dire tragedy? No spoilers…

#3 We’re $1,000,000 In Debt and Only 20% Is The House
Channel: The Ramsey Show Highlights
Brand: Yrefy
Views: 5,657,945

Debt is everywhere these days. Forget houses, cars, and educations–you can go into debt DoorDashing a burrito. But some people do still go into debt over houses. Unfortunately for the couple who calls in to Dave Ramsey‘s show in this first clip, the house isn’t their only debt. They’ve racked up $136K in credit card debt, $35K in personal loans, and over $300K in student loans. In total, they owe just under $1 million. What can they do, they ask Ramsey, without filing bankruptcy? His response begins ominously: “I’m getting ready to destroy your life as you know it.” And the commenters are very into this approach. “Dave isn’t going to destroy their lives, he’s going to help rebuild them,” one says reverently. However Ramsey’s advice works out, he’s walking away making some nice cash, both from sponsor Yrefy (a student loan company, which might prove useful for our callers) and YouTube’s AdSense.

#4 I Make $280,000, He Doesn’t Work — Is This a Deal Breaker?
Channel: The Ramsey Show Highlights
Brand: Zander Insurance
Views: 4,635,267

In Ramsey‘s second clip of the week, we have a couple with an entirely different problem. One is a successful surgeon expecting to make $500K this year. Nice! The issue? Her boyfriend, an aspiring actor, doesn’t want to get a job. Is that grounds for a breakup? Ramsey might not run a relationship show, but this sort of call is just as common as hard-line questions about cash-handling. In this case, his advice (delivered to YouTube thanks to sponsor Zander Insurance) is pretty predictable: Dump him, girl!

BONUS #2,195 the TV show that lets you watch and game at the same time!
Channel: Disguised Toast
Brand: Netflix
Views: 29,616

With the third and final season of Squid Game, Netflix took the “game” in its name seriously. We just wrote about how it did deals with both Roblox and Fortnite that would allow developers to use the platforms’ assets to build their own Squid Game-themed games. (That rollout went less than smoothly on Fortnite.) But Netflix wasn’t content with simply letting other people make games. It pushed its second-screen and mobile gaming ambitions by publishing Squid Game: Unleashed, a mobile party game that simulates the show’s high-priced competition (but, you know, with less death). Known gamer Disguised Toast was tapped to promote it, and racked up 30K views with his 59-second Short.

…and there’s a lot more data where that came from. If you’re interested in learning more about Gospel – and which brands are sponsoring what creators on YouTube – click here.