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. You can also download our YouTube 2025 Sponsorship Landscape Report here.
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With the Super Bowl just wrapped and the Winter Olympics in full swing, it’s a season of sports–and if there’s anything YouTube likes, it’s sports.
Don’t worry, there’s also something for the non-sports lovers. This week brings Salish Matter for the lifestylers and HAUS PLANS for people who want to live vicariously through others’ jobs.
And, of course, there’s always MrBeast.
Check ’em all out below:
#1 Ages 1 – 100 Race For $250,000!
Channel: MrBeast
Brand: Whatnot
Views: 66,483,953
We’ll admit it: We’re running out of things to say about MrBeast-isms. We get it–this formula is tried and true, and obviously people watch it, considering this upload has 66 million views. But we’re wondering if and when MrBeast will ever switch things up.
One thing that is a bit of a switch-up this week is his partnership with Whatnot. The live selling/shopping app is a newcomer to the MrBeast partner portfolio, but it’s an obvious one, with MrBeast and money being the PB & J of YouTube. He parlayed his money-money-money reputation into his very own stream on Whatnot, where he went live on Super Bowl Sunday and handed out $1 million worth of giveaways.
But Whatnot wasn’t his only Super Bowl partner…
#2 Watch My Super Bowl Ad To Win $1,000,000!
Channel: MrBeast
Brand: Salesforce
Views: 11,494,690
Back in December, MrBeast tweeted that he was “sitting on an amazing Super Bowl commercial idea.” He just needed a company to pony up the millions it would cost to secure a coveted game day slot. In exchange? MrBeast would become an official spread-the-word-er for their biz.
The company that stepped up was Salesforce, and that “amazing commercial idea” ended up being…pretty much like every other MrBeast idea. The commercial advertised Salesforce’s workplace organizer chatroom Slack and introduced a sprawling Ready Player One-style set of puzzles. Whoever solves them first will win $1 million. To date, no one has won that prize. Hey, maybe it really will turn out like RPO, and someday, hundreds of years in the future, an entire ecosystem will be built around cracking MrBeast’s puzzle vault.
For now, MrBeast is the winner, having added yet another company to his sponsor roster.
#3 I Built a SECRET HOT TUB In My Bedroom
Channel: Jordan Matter
Brand: Sephora
Views: 10,980,067
Like MrBeast, Jordan Matter has also nailed down a formula with his daughter Salish. Take a little challenge, a dash of wink-wink teenage mischief where no one is actually disobeying their parents, and an omnipresent fixation on whether 16-year-old Salish is dating anyone, and you’ve got a Matter video.
And, like lots of their videos of late, this one is sponsored by Sephora, the official partner for Salish’s cosmetics line Sincerely Yours. The family and brand have a long-term relationship–the sort of deal many creators are seeking these days–and it seems to be somewhat exclusive, too, since Sephora didn’t sponsor any YouTube videos outside of Jordan and Salish’s.
#4 Making Giant Donuts On The Jobsite #sponsored @5hourenergyshot
Channel: HAUS PLANS
Brand: 5-hour Energy
Views: 9,501,224
Back when I was a teenage gamer, I was downing 5-hour Energy shots after school so I could stay up all night cranking Mass Effect (do not advise; I think my ZZZ schedule still hasn’t recovered).
But these days, the gaming niche has been dominated by brands like GFUEL, Gamer Supps, and Red Bull. So 5-hour Energy has gone elsewhere, appealing to blue collar laborers stuck on long shifts. That’s what makes it a good fit for HAUS PLANS, a channel run by a general contractor showing his everyday work.
This 33-second clip has him mixing in the vibes of those weird TikTok cooking videos: He’s gonna make donuts, but with construction equipment. The whole thing is meant to advertise that 5-hour Energy has a new birthday cake flavor (with the implication that it’s strong and sweet enough to make that grueling 12-hour day survivable).
The only other video 5-hour sponsored this week is aimed at the same audience (blue collar young adult to middle-aged men), but through a different pathway: an episode of the Locked On Fantasy Football podcast.
BONUS #179 Why This Olympic Sport Bothers Physicists
Channel: Cleo Abram
Brand: NBC
Views: 2,722,527
If you’ve never watched curling, this is your sign to start. But we didn’t pick this video because of curling. We picked it because of the sponsor: NBC.
On YouTube, there’s always been a bit of a feel that creators are competing with legacy media entities, including TV networks. We have, however, seen those TV networks gradually begin to open their ranks to creators, bringing them along to color official coverage of events like the Super Bowl and Coachella.
Now, NBC is bringing creators to the Winter Olympics. Well, virtually. Its parent company NBCUniversal holds the exclusive U.S. media rights to the Winter Olympics through 2036, and NBC is making use of those rights by sponsoring creators like journalist Cleo Abram to stir up interest in the Olympics from viewers who might not otherwise watch it. STEM nerds (we say this fondly) might bypass the Olympics if they’re not into sports. Abrams’ video, however, opens the gate for this new audience by using physics to talk about curling.
We think it’s a clever strategy. And it seems to be paying off for NBC, because the other two Olympics videos it sponsored from Abrams ended up in spots #5 and #6 this week.
…and there’s a lot more data where that came from. If you like our Weekly Top 5, you’ll love everything else Gospel has to offer. Start with our newly released YouTube 2025 Sponsorship Landscape Report, which you can download right here.
