Top 5 Branded Videos of the Week: Fortnite’s new dawn
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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I’m convinced: Fortnite is simply unkillable. It had some astronomical events around 2020 (pun fully intended), but seemed to go through a lull as other battle royale games entered the arena. Apex Legends, for example, is less of a party game and proved a seroius combatant; it has a grittier, more realistic vibe, and appeals to an adult audience interested in long-term storytelling with fleshed-out characters.
But Fortnite stuck around through that boom and doubled down on storytelling and flashy IP partnerships. Now that Apex is in a tough spot with thin lore and a recent, controversial sale to Saudi Arabia brokered by Jared Kushner, Epic Games‘ title is surging.
More on that below–along with, of course, the requisite MrBeast presence and a TikTok Shop chaser.
Check it all out right here:
#1 World’s Fastest Man Vs Robot!
Channel: MrBeast
Brand: Moose Toys
Views: 66,327,691
Look, in our current era of AI slopification, I think more people should listen to Drew Gooden and Hank Green. But the inevitable bubble burst looming on the horizon isn’t stopping people from asking whether humans will be replaced by robots. Mostly that question is asked in ways that make me feel endless existential dread (do we really need LLMs to make art for us? Become our BFFs? Think for us? Kiss our wives for us?), but MrBeast is asking in a mostly fun way.
His 18-minute video asks this question in a way that pits the world’s top-physically-performing humans against robots. Can the fastest man on Earth outrace a bot? Can the strongest man on Earth outwrestle a giant mech? (Do we hear the faint sound of The Rock‘s next movie plot?)
The video’s battle theme fits its sponsor: Moose Toys, which makes the MrBeast Lab toys–and, recently, the MrBeast Lab YouTube series, which got nearly 6 million views on its first episode and is pushing MrBeast’s new Fusion toy line.
#2 Fortnite won’t EVER be the same…
Channel: SPLShortStories
Brand: Epic Games
Views: 23,433,053
On Nov. 29, over 10 million players gathered live for Fortnite‘s Zero Hour, a massive multiuniverse event that concluded its long-running Chapter 6 (as well as a Simpsons mini-season) and brought our intrepid heroes to a new island, and thus a new map on which to slay one another over and over and over.
Ahead of the event, Fortnite developer Epic Games set up quite the creator-driven promo–a promo so successful, it took up spots #2, #3, and #4 in this week’s Gospel Stats Weekly Brand Report top 5. It’s not unusual to see the same creators or even the same brand partners pop up two or three times on the list. But three spots being taken up by the same campaign is pretty wild.
The top-performing video of the campaign came from SPLShortStories, who has ~80,000 subscribers and racked up nearly 24 million views with his 60-second preview of Zero Hour and Season 7.
#3 Next Week Fortnite Changes FOREVER 🤯
Channel: LEGIQN
Brand: Epic Games
Views: 13,497,792
Fortnite‘s next top-performing video came from LEGIQN, a gaming-focused creator who normally brings between 1 and 2 million views per month. That’s a smaller view count than big brands typically pick (just like SPLShortStories has a smaller subscriber count than brands typically prefer), but his entire channel is full of Fortnite, and considering this video got nearly 14 million views, it’s clear the passion paid off.
Epic Games put a lot of effort into promoting the Zero Hour live event and its new game chapter–and that’s not a surprise, considering the game has been ramping up its IP partnerships. Its sprawling Marvel partnership, which kicked off in 2018, was arguably its first major IP, and since then it’s partnered with everything from Star Wars to Hatsune Miku. Season 6 was marked by a collaboration with The Simpsons, and Zero Hour followed a massive Ready Player One-esque fight where Homer Simpson and Godzilla were among those battling to save the Fortnite universe from the evil Dark Presence.
#4 #EpicPartner Get ready for the @fortnite Zero Hour Chapter 6 Finale Live Event! #fortnite
Channel: Micawave
Brand: Epic Games
Views: 13,296,697
Meta poured so much money into trying to make the metaverse a thing, but Roblox and Fortnite are really just out here doing it. Between the aforementioned Ready Player One fight and the fact that Fortnite is becoming the home for things like a once-lost Kill Bill spinoff…Could Fortnite be where we all live our second lives in the year 2035?
Maybe. Maybe not. Either way, we saw the power Epic Games‘ flagship title holds this week. While Micawave is the last creator to make our top 5 with a Fortnite video (a 30-second preview clip that racked up ~13M views), he’s not the last Epic partner of the week. A total of six creators made videos about Zero Hour and Chapter 7. Now that the holidays are over and gamers are getting back into routine, we’ll see if all that promo pays off.
BONUS #834 At the end of the internet.
Channel: Art21
Brand: Chanel
Views: 199,899
Ahead of Black Friday, TikTok Shop tried to shed its dollar store knockoff image by listing secondhand sales from luxury brands–brands like Chanel.
But Chanel can promote itself, too. It partnered with Art21, an organization that produces video interviews with artists across various media, for a new Shorts series called IRL/url. Each installment features a different artist talking about how they view the world, both “in real life” and through the computer screen where they make their art. This episode, which got nearly 200,000 views, profiled Sara Cwynar, a photographer, collage, and installation artist living in Brooklyn.
In an era of overconsumption and trendy brands, it’s good to get a reminder that some legacy fashion brands continue investing in and supporting traditional artists–the same sort of people that helped turn them into the global powerhouses they are.
…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.
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