Top 5 Branded Videos of the Week: 10 years in the making

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.

There are a lot of familiar faces in this week’s Gospel Stats Brand Report, but also a couple newcomers.

MrBeast, Veritasium, and Druski take up the top spots once again, but streamer Ludwig makes his debut at #2 with an esports event powered by Samsung. And we have a bonus video from a small homestead that just wants to see its tiny quails in tip-top shape.

Check ’em all out below:

#1 1 Minute vs 10 Year Build Challenge
Channel: MrBeast
Brand: Feastables
Views: 27,748,946

MrBeast returns with another gaming competition–but this time, it’s less survival strategy and more artistry. He pits a handful of expert Minecraft architects (who also all happen to be real-life architects too) against one another with varied time limits, promising that whoever’s build is chosen as the best will get a crisp $10,000.

The biggest build on tap is from Wiseguy, who, along with a group of friends, spend 10 years building Greenfield, a virtual city with over 10,000 buildings. He and the team have totaled over 100,000 working hours on putting the city together, but in this video they’re up against competitors with much smaller time limits: one month, one day, even just one minute.

Like many of MrBeast’s videos (especially those on his side channels), this one is sponsored by his chocolate brand Feastables. Feastables also sponsored a video on his other side channel, MrBeast 2, about ethical production of chocolate.

#2 #PlayGalaxy Cup: PUBG MOBILE Global Open hosted by Samsung Galaxy
Channel: Ludwig
Brand: Samsung
Views: 16,781,874

Mobile gaming is bigger than ever, and Ludwig is smack in the middle of it.

Most videos we see here are firm uploads–long-form and short-form. But this is a sponsored livestream, with Samsung paying Ludwig to host the first #PlayGalaxy Cup, a mobile esports tourney aimed at showcasing gameplay on Samsung’s Galaxy 26 Ultra. The tournament is around two hours long and has Ludwig onstage co-hosting and providing commentary.

In terms of the stream itself, Samsung is in the spotlight as the organizer/premier sponsor, but when it comes to Ludwig’s video description, the tech company is squeezed for space. Ludwig’s also promoting his production company Offbrand, upcoming puzzle game Stretchmancer, another indie game Rivals of Aether II, another indie game Aethermancer, his own upcoming “weird frog game,” and creator STEM convention Open Sauce. Quite the busy intersection.

#3 The Internet Was Weeks Away From Disaster and No One Knew
Channel: Veritasium
Brand: NordVPN
Views: 11,503,454

“We were weeks away from millions of internet servers being accessible to whoever crafted the backdoor. Anything from spying, to ransom, to taking down entire countries, you could have done it with this backdoor.”

It sounds like the plot of an early 2000s Jake Gyllenhaal techno-thriller. But it was real. In 2021, someone going by the name Jia Tan inserted a backdoor into the operating system Linux–a backdoor that, if slipped through, could have had cataclysmic results across the globe, both online and off. It took a monumental team effort to understand the backdoor…but it’s still not sealed.

Veritasium‘s slickly produced deep dive into this situation is sponsored (appropriately) by NordVPN, which promises it is a “fast, secure, and risk-free VPN for online privacy.”

#4 Coulda Been Love 2 Episode 3: Bambi’s Back
Channel: Druski
Brand: SeatGeek, Buffalo Wild Wings
Views: 6,512,696

Druski is no stranger to our top 5 lists. His YouTube-native reality series Coulda Been Love and Coulda Been House have proved to be top programming, and now he’s back and racking up numbers with Coulda Been Love 2.

The show screams vintage VH1, and features a whole host of spicy ladies competing for a spot on 31-year-old Druski’s arm. This episode–where the (in?)famous challenger Bambi returns to the house–has a double whammy sponsor: SeatGeek and Buffalo Wild Wings. BW3s gets an interesting shout-out right at the start of the episode, with pop-up graphics and a timely meal deal that reminds us of traditional TV ad placements.

Makes sense–if Druski is the new Flavor of Love, he’s wise to treat top-billed sponsors like they’re in the primetime broadcast slot.

BONUS #2,489 We Gave our Tiny Quail Pedicures
Channel: White House on the Hill
Brand: Anker
Views: 54,450

Last week’s bonus video was about therapy for Elphaba. This week’s bonus video is about therapy for us. Yes, we would in fact like to watch 15 minutes of itty bitty birds getting pedicures, thank you.

This moment of peace is brought to White House on the Hill‘s YouTube channel by Anker, which has nothing to do with avian husbandry directly but is a fit for the farm life vibe, since it sells things like power banks and mobile chargers that are handy for homesteaders. Anker sponsored a handful of other videos this week, including one that targets off-gridders with a seven-day challenge about living with the solar-powered devices from its SOLIX line.

…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.