MrBeast Broke YouTube, But... Did He Also Break Mobile?

I love me a good influencer marketing campaign, and last week one of the most ambitious ones I've seen in a while went live.

Supercell teamed up with YouTube's MrBeast and sponsored his latest video, a real-life version of Squid Game, to promote their mobile game Brawl Stars. The video got 100 million views in 3 days, and during the video, MrBeast himself disclosed it cost $3.5 million to produce.

I think it's safe to assume that Supercell paid most, if not all, of the bill.

Was it worth it?

Short answer - probably not.

Well, it depends.

According to our app intelligence, Brawl Stars saw a noticeable increase in downloads in some countries, but overall it wasn't that significant. Revenue, on the other hand, was completely unaffected.

I've looked at our estimates for Brawl Stars across the globe, comparing downloads during the week of the promotion to the previous week. The U.S. saw the most significant increase, with downloads growing 237%, from 67,00 to 226,000. Canada, the UK, and several other countries also saw triple-digit growth.

Overall, weekly downloads grew 27% to 1.44M, according to our estimates.

Revenue remained pretty stagnant throughout the week. Now that isn't necessarily a bad sign because freemium games don't always require payment right away. So there might be a sprout coming soon. I don't really expect it, though.

So, were a few hundred thousand downloads worth $3.5 million?

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