Tube Trends: MrBeast Uses Giveaways To Hit New Highs

MrBeast (Jimmy Donaldson) has been part of the video ecosystem for nearly 15 years, and despite his veteran status at this point, he’s still finding new ways to succeed on YouTube.

His latest win? Leading with giveaways.

Over the last 90 days, MrBeast has accounted for the two most-watched U.S. YouTube videos by a considerable amount. His “Subscribe For An iPhone” upload from mid-January is the only U.S. YouTube video with over a billion views in that timeframe, while another video giving away $100K in prizes to subscribers around the holidays has hit 830 million views (nearly 200 million more views than the next most-watched U.S. video on the platform).

MrBeast getting a ton of views isn’t necessarily news either, of course. He’s well established as one of the most popular social video creators and has a massive audience that’s expanded well beyond his original footprint, into “actual” TV.

Still, even for him, the giveaway focus has created some clear wins when it comes to views.

Data from Tubular Labs shows MrBeast is hitting three-year highs for views as he leans into giveaways as a way to drive audience and engagement.

MrBeast monthly views, three-year snapshot (via Tubular Labs)

MrBeast videos haven’t been strangers to giveaway gimmicks, but it has become a more outsized aspect of his video strategy of late.

Over the last 90 days, more than half of his most-seen videos feature some sort of giveaway element. Looking back at the last year, the percentage isn’t nearly as high.

But Donaldson has steadily grown giveaways, and simply giving away his money, as a notable aspect of his brand. And the greater emphasis that came in late 2025 and is beginning to carry into his content this year is around making audiences “feel something” around his content — to take from an interview he gave to Business Insider in December.

To-date, that greater focus on user emotions doesn’t seem to be diminishing his giveaways. And it’s also spurred numerous imitators as giveaways become a larger part of the social video ecosystem as well.

From Jan. 1-June 30, 2025, there were 77K U.S. YouTube uploads around giveaways, amounting to 3.0 billion views (38.5K views per), according to Tubular. But in the six months that followed, giveaway-focused YouTube videos hit 5.2 billion views in the U.S., on an average of 55.6K views per video.

Interestingly, creators still control this space, however.

Tubular data shows that individual creators accounted for 86.7% of giveaway-related YouTube views in the first half of 2025, and 96.2% in the second half.

Despite brands having conceivably deeper pockets to post this sort of giveaway content, creators have managed to grow their footprint in the space, as brands shrink and media companies stay relatively static (very slightly movement from 1.3% to 1.6% of views).

Those results would potentially be informative for advertisers trying to find their way into giveaways as a form of audience engagement.

Rather than have brands try to cultivate the desired audience on their own, creators already owning the giveaway landscape provides a clear path to partnership and spending money getting in front of audiences that already exist (and are happy to engage with this content). The creator may get more credit for “running” the contest. But if Pepsi or P&G or any other brand is going to be the one providing the big prizes, there’s still obvious residual benefit in terms of both goodwill and potential customer acquisition.

Giveaways aren’t a new idea, but they have been given a fresh coat of paint lately thanks to creators. It’s up to brands (and publishers) to take advantage, though, as they’re quickly lagging behind their more agile competition for attention around these ideas.