Top 5 Branded Videos of the Week: Flippin’ robotics

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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This week we welcome Veritasium back to the Gospel Stats Brand Report, along with PewDiePie‘s grand finale, a Dr Insanity usual, and

Check ’em all out below:

#1 My life keeps changing so my phone has to keep up. ??@verizon keeps it simple.
Channel: msnewslady
Brand: Verizon
Views: 48,220,247

After more than a decade as a reporter, Jeannette Reyes headed off the air and onto the internet, where she’s built herself a digital brand promising she can help companies “tell better stories.”

And one of those brands is her sponsor Verizon. Reyes’ Short–which, like most sponsored Shorts, focuses entirely on the paying product–has racked up 48 million views for the telecom company by spotlighting its place in her day-to-day life. Reyes talks up her schedule as a busy entrepreneur who has to balance podcasts, YouTube uploads, and family time, and says Verizon’s free-upgrade-every-year promise is how she keeps up. (Google also gets a shout-out, with Reyes asking its chatbot Gemini to come up with three talking points for the podcast interview she’s about to do.)

While Reyes was Verizon’s most-watched partner this week, she wasn’t its only buy: soccer-talk channel Men in Blazers got a Verizon sponsor for video #5,258.

#2 The Insane Real Engineering of the Nazi Enigma Machine
Channel: Veritasium
Brand: Incogni
Views: 16,086,710

World War II was a new era for codebreaking. Allied nations had to super-evolve their capabilities to crack the Nazis’ communiqués, and were only able to do so thanks to the genius of mathematicians and cryptanalysts like Alan Turing and Joan Clarke.

Veritasium got his hands on an actual German codebox (called the Enigma machine) for a 50-minute deep dive that takes viewers into how the Nazis’ code worked, why it was so difficult to break, and how Turing’s team managed to accomplish this monumental task and undercut the Nazis to put an end to their atrocities.

His sponsor for this video is a bit on theme: Incogni, which promises clients it’ll scrub their exposed personal information from data brokers’ collections. A very prolific YouTuber sponsor, Incogni paid for more than 60 videos this week alone.

#3 Thank you and Goodbye.
Channel: PewDiePie
Brand: NordVPN, Incogni
Views: 12,462,530

PewDiePie isn’t going anywhere. But his vlogs are.

Fulfilling plans laid out in his announcement earlier this year, the OG YouTuber has ended his monthly vlog series where he talked about his life outside of the internet–including, crucially, his wife Marzia

and their son Björn. In the announcement video, PewDiePie (aka Felix Kjellberg) said Björn has gotten old enough that he’s not comfortable uploading videos until the kiddo gets a bit older and can consciously decide whether he wants to be online or not.

Kjellberg’s decision calls attention to one of the most contentious content categories across socials: family vlogs. YouTube has been around long enough that we’re now hitting an era where kids whose parents turned them into digital cash cows a decade ago are coming forward about their experiences, and as you may guess, not all of those experiences are good. Our current hellscape also includes the threat of AI-made CSAM that can be modeled after video content of real kids.

The seriousness of this video doesn’t preclude having sponsors. Kjellberg, like Veritasium, picked up Incogni as well as the omnipresent NordVPN.

#4 Woman Gets Pulled Over In The Middle Of Dumping A Dead Body
Channel: Dr Insanity
Brand: Chime
Views: 9,777,400

Dr Insanity is back on our list with another body cam footage rundown of a recent crime. After 67-year-old Albert Peña vanished, having last been seen alive at a bar in Mountainair, New Mexico, local police launched an investigation. Over 100 miles away, a different county force happened to pull over Moises Lopez, Jaylene Lewark, Cady Landrum, and Manuel Lopez, who allegedly had just dumped Peña’s body.

True crime can be tough to place ads on, but Dr Insanity doesn’t seem to struggle. He regularly works with some of YouTube’s biggest-presence sponsors–like this week’s brand, Chime, which paid for nearly 20 other videos. On past uploads, he’s advertised Zocdoc, PDS Debt, BetterHelp, Morgan & Morgan, and HelloFresh, all of which run marketing on numerous videos every single week.

BONUS #1,108 I made a Fighting Robot with Flexible Flippers!
Channel: Maker’s Muse
Brand: Snapmaker
Views: 241,191

As someone who’s always loved robots and is not exactly thrilled with the current deluge of AI slop, I look for people still doing old-fashioned robotics instead of the uncanny valley servant girls we see on Silicon Valley stages.

Battle bots are a time-honored tradition for newbie and expert robotics enthusiasts alike, and 3D printing channel Maker’s Muse (which refuses to promote AI companies and gambling apps) is helping that spirit live on. Its new creation is a formidable fighter with thermoplastic polyurethane flippers–and I, for one, would be cheering ringside for this lad to slap the competition.

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…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.