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How much does it cost to run an advertisement with MrBeast, the world’s top YouTuber?

Newly filed court documents offer a glimpse into the content creator’s ad rates and pitches to brands as he expanded his business and prepared to launch the first season of his Amazon Prime Video show “Beast Games.”

In early 2024, when MrBeast, whose real name is Jimmy Donaldson, had about half the subscribers he has today, a 30- to 45-second sponsored segment on his main channel cost around $2.5 million, according to a company rate card shared as part of an ongoing lawsuit with his food-industry business partner.

Buying a TikTok or YouTube shorts video to accompany a main-channel ad would cost another half a million bucks, while using the MrBeast branding on a company’s website would run as much as $1 million a month, per the rate card.

With hundreds of millions of subscribers, MrBeast has built a marketing machine for brands. In the middle of 2024, the company said in board meeting documents that it had contracted $91 million in deals with brands heading into 2025, including $15 million from T-Mobile for four video promotions and $12.5 million from Amazon for five main-channel ads. An exact timeframe wasn’t specified.

Business Insider sifted through hundreds of documents related to MrBeast’s court battle to learn more about how he works with companies on partnerships. In addition to uncovering deal rates, we reviewed pitches to Walmart, Slack, and Sony.

The MrBeast team emphasized the global size of his audience and his stunty videos in pitches. MrBeast himself is prominent in the pitches, though the company has recently been trying to diversify away from his image as it grows.

The proposals are ambitious — one pitched Slack on a $15 million, 12-month program — and show how the company was positioning itself to compete with traditional entertainment giants like Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery for ad budgets. That push has continued under MrBeast’s current leadership, as shown by a recent TV upfronts week breakfast for brands.

Bryce Adams, the US influencer lead for WPP’s influencer agency, The Goat Agency, said the pitches show MrBeast’s company positioning itself as a large-scale media company, as if to say, “You should look at us like we’re an NBC.”

The pitches also matched MrBeast’s spectacle-style content. In a sponsorship proposal from late 2022, his team asked Walmart for $8 million to $10 million to fund a video in which contestants would try to buy everything in a Supercenter, with MrBeast footing the bill. MrBeast hasn’t made the video, though a February 2023 board meeting presentation showed that MrBeast expected to earn $8 million in revenue from Walmart that year.

He pitched Slack on a marketing partnership in 2023, which may have planted the seeds for a Super Bowl spot three years later, in which contestants used Slackbot to solve clues in a digital treasure hunt.

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.

Here are four takeaways from the documents, which we’ve also posted in full below:

1. MrBeast pitches his scale

Front and center in MrBeast’s pitches is his massive audience.

His proposals tout how he’s the most-followed creator on the planet, with hundreds of millions of followers on YouTube and other platforms.

The decks are light on detail about how the audience differs by platform and geography, data points that are important to marketers and that they might expect up front from smaller creators who have more to prove.

2. ‘Jimmy’ is central to the campaigns

Donaldson figures prominently in the decks, and they emphasize how he can help brands achieve their business goals.

By partnering with MrBeast, brands will benefit from the trust he’s built with his audience, the pitches say. The Slack pitch said that the creator’s own team used the workplace platform and that the “super-influencer” could get other creators to sign up, too. It said creators are small businesses that Slack should have on its radar.

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

Big marketers are increasingly treating creators as ongoing partners, a shift the deck nods at.

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

3. MrBeast reaches young people who don’t watch TV

The creator makes the point that young people aren’t watching traditional TV — and brands that want to reach them need to get aboard the creator train.

“Next gen consumers have dramatically shifted to digital media — and specifically digital creators,” the Slack proposal said.

The Slack deck argues that partnering with MrBeast is an investment in the future, even if the typical MrBeast viewer isn’t running an enterprise today.

“Your Next 100M Customers Watch MrBeast Right Now,” it said.

4. He promises results

The proposals highlight brand attributes that could be worked into a campaign, including Slack’s productivity tools and Sony’s headset features for chatting with other gamers.

The Slack deck also includes examples of how previous MrBeast campaigns drove actions for other companies, like the Brawl Stars mobile game and the Shop app.

The Sony proposal emphasized how MrBeast’s online popularity translated to real-life actions, including attracting more than 25,000 people to his first brick-and-mortar MrBeast Burger restaurant.

Overall, a main takeaway of the proposals was that MrBeast’s trust with viewers can help translate brand messages to consumers.

“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.

The full pitches are included below:

Slack: 21 pages

Sony: 27 pages

Walmart: 41 pages