MrBeast charges $2.5M per ad slot, court docs show

A 30- to 45-second sponsored segment on MrBeast's main YouTube channel cost roughly $2.5 million in early 2024, according to a rate card filed in an ongoing lawsuit with his food-industry business partner. The YouTuber, whose real name is Jimmy Donaldson, had about half the subscribers he has now at the time.

Buying a TikTok or YouTube Shorts video to pair with a main-channel ad added another $500,000. Using the MrBeast branding on a company's website ran as much as $1 million a month, per the rate card.

Board meeting documents from mid-2024 showed the company had contracted $91 million in brand deals heading into 2025. That included $15 million from T-Mobile for four video promotions and $12.5 million from Amazon for five main-channel ads. An exact timeframe for those contracts was not specified.

Business Insider reviewed hundreds of documents from the court battle to examine how Donaldson's company pitches brands. The proposals show the team positioning itself as a large-scale media company competing with traditional entertainment giants like Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery for ad budgets.

"You should look at us like we're an NBC," said Bryce Adams, the U.S. influencer lead for WPP's influencer agency The Goat Agency.

A sponsorship proposal from late 2022 asked Walmart for $8 million to $10 million to fund a video where contestants would try to buy everything in a Supercenter, with MrBeast footing the bill. The video has not been made, though a February 2023 board meeting presentation showed MrBeast expected to earn $8 million in revenue from Walmart that year.

Slack got a pitch for a $15 million, 12-month program in 2023. That may have planted the seeds for a Super Bowl spot three years later where contestants used Slackbot to solve clues in a digital treasure hunt.

The pitches emphasize the global size of Donaldson's audience and his spectacle-style content. They are light on detail about how the audience differs by platform and geography, data points that marketers typically expect from smaller creators with more to prove.

Donaldson himself is prominent in the decks. The Slack pitch said the creator's own team used the workplace platform and that the "super-influencer" could get other creators to sign up. It argued creators are small businesses that Slack should have on its radar.

"This immediately bridges the gap: why MrBeast and why Slack," said Jo Wong, general manager of Pop.Store, an AI commerce company that helps creators build online businesses.

The Sony pitch quoted the company's then-CEO saying he wanted the company to be chosen by creators. "Fortune 500 companies are finally recognizing the value MrBeast brings to brands," the deck said. "MrBeast serves as a trusted voice and helps translate brand messaging into digestible concepts to the everyday consumer."

The Slack deck argued that partnering with MrBeast is an investment in the future, even if the typical MrBeast viewer is not running an enterprise today. "Your Next 100M Customers Watch MrBeast Right Now," it said.

Imogen Coles, head of influence in EMEA for Ogilvy, said the proposals stood out for their detail on growth and readability. "Not every creator makes costs and deliverables so clear – they often want more information from the brand first, which can derail a conversation," she said.

The company has recently been trying to diversify away from Donaldson's image as it grows. The push continued with a recent TV upfronts week breakfast for brands.

"What he's saying is, combining my identity with yours is going to give you reach you're not going to get anywhere else," Adams said.