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.
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Here on our Gospel Stats Weekly Brand Reports, it’s not too uncommon for us to have a double-header, with one creator getting two sponsored videos in our top 5. But Joe Rogan has set a new record: he’s responsible for the #1, #2, and #4 most-watched sponsored videos on all of YouTube this week. How? By scoring interviews with in-the-news-cycle figures like Mark Zuckerberg and celebrities like Mel Gibson. In between his vids, we have the return of David Dobrik and a last hurrah for Hawk Tuah Girl.
Check ’em all out right here:
#1 Joe Rogan Experience #2254 – Mel Gibson
Channel: PowerfulJRE
Brand: Athletic Greens, DraftKings
Views: 8,628,193
In the first of his three top 5 vids this week, Joe Rogan sits down with Hollywood’s Mel Gibson, who’s promoting his new film Flight Risk, starring Mark Wahlberg. Their two-and-a-half-hour discussion covered a range of topics–and, as is typical with Gibson, he made several controversial bordering on conspiratorial remarks, including a segment where he said multiple friends with late-stage cancer were cured by taking ivermectin and fenbendazole. “They drank hydrochloride something or other,” he added. Rogan, also typically, agreed with his guest, saying there are “studies on this now where people have proven” that these drugs work on cancer. The episode topped out at nearly 9 million views, and was sponsored by Rogan’s usual partners, Athletic Greens and DraftKings (the latter of which sponsored over 70 videos this week in its pre-Super Bowl ramp-up).
#2 Joe Rogan Experience #2255 – Mark Zuckerberg
Channel: PowerfulJRE
Brand: Athletic Greens
Views: 8,070,603
In Rogan #2, he brings on Meta founder/CEO Mark Zuckerberg. The Zuck has also been a center of contention over the last couple weeks, after he announced Meta’s plans to suck up to the incoming Trump administration by axing its in-house fact-checking program and changing its TOS to allow hate speech. They go a little longer than Gibson and Rogan, stretching to three hours, but covering a similarly broad range of topics. Much of the discussion gives Zuck room to talk about the things that fed Meta’s new approach to content management, including his beliefs that news outlets can no longer be trusted to give accurate information and that governments shouldn’t pressure social media platforms to take responsibility for cracking down on vaccine misinformation. Considering he’s echoing much of what we hear from Trump and Elon Musk, we don’t think he’ll have much of a problem with the new government.
#3 SURPRISING FRIENDS WITH BODY TRANSFORMATION!!
Channel: David Dobrik
Brand: SeatGeek
Views: 7,281,709
David Dobrik is back. His three-year hiatus from vlogging, taken in the wake of numerous scandals, is officially over. The Vine star turned YouTuber reemerged with a video where MrBeast challenged him to get in shape with a year of workouts. Dobrik actually did it–and the whole shebang was sponsored by his longtime partner SeatGeek, which pulled away from him during the aforementioned scandals, but seems willing to let him be its poster boy once again.
#4 Joe Rogan Experience #2252 – Wesley Huff
Channel: PowerfulJRE
Brand: ExpressVPN, DraftKings
Views: 5,311,944
For our third and final Rogan of the week, the Central Canada Director for religious organization Apologetics Canada, Wesley Huff, joins him to talk Jesus. Huff describes himself as a former paraplegic who “experienced a miraculous recovery for which the doctors themselves had no medical explanation,” and his three-hour episode with Rogan is mostly faith-centered. Like the rest of Rogan’s material this week, it drew big views, racking up over 5 million. We should also mention that, while this is Rogan’s final episode in the top 5, he was also in at spot #8 with a Theo Von interview.
BONUS #12 Finding Love with the Hawk Tuah Dating App
Channel: Chad Chad
Brand: Trainwell
Views: 2,194,012
To round out a solid week of controversy, we have YouTuber Chad Chad venturing into the depths Hawk Tuah Girl‘s AI-driven dating app, Pookie, so you don’t have to. Hawk Tuah Girl–aka Haliey Welch–had a meteoric rise to memedom and, thanks to her failed cryptocurrency, a just-as-swift tumble. But while she’s all but vanished from the internet, traces of her remain…including this chance to find love.
…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.
