Creators Agency Research / July 2026
10,000 Sponsored YouTube Videos
Where brands buy, where they return, and how marketers can build smarter YouTube sponsorship tests.
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The short version
Three findings marketers can use before the next campaign
We drew a fixed random sample from Creators Agency's sponsor-detection archive, classified every brand and channel, and then looked at where sponsorships happened, where the same buyer returned, and how sponsored videos performed against each channel's usual views.
showed an observed renewal
531 of 1,948 eligible brand-and-channel pairings
What this means: most eligible first buys did not show a return inside the study window. Decide before launch what result would earn a second video.
met or beat usual views
Among 3,170 comparable sponsor videos posted in 2026
What this means: sponsorship did not mean weaker reach overall in this sample. Plan from a creator's usual views, then expect individual videos to vary.
as high outside the B2B creator niche
Business-only brands: 34.1% outside versus 22.6% with B2B creators
What this means: keep the obvious audience fit in the plan, then test one adjacent audience that has the same problem your product solves.
The view figure and renewal figure use different cohorts and units. One percentage is not a drop from the other, and neither is a promise for an individual campaign.
Selected findings
What the market shows. What it does not.
The important numbers, methods, and limits are public. You do not need to enter an email to understand or cite the work.
Channel size
Mid-sized channels had the highest observed renewal rate
Half of the sponsor videos we could size ran on channels below 50,000 usual views. Those smaller channels were used most, but the middle band showed more same-brand returns inside the study window.
Do not treat channel size as a shortcut for quality. Build the first test across more than one size band, then compare reach, cost, and your own business results.
Buyer fit
Business-only brands bought mostly in B2B, then renewed more often elsewhere
Business-only brands placed 64.1% of weighted sponsor activity with B2B creators. Yet the observed renewal rate was 34.1% outside that creator niche versus 22.6% inside it.
The most-used lane is not always the clear return winner. Keep category fit at the center, but give one broader-interest creator a fair test around a real product use case.
1.5× the observed renewal rate outside the B2B creator niche
Sponsored-video views
The middle result held up, but individual videos still swung widely
The median sponsored video reached 105.8% of its channel's usual views. At the same time, 15.7% fell below half of usual views and 28.3% reached at least 1.5 times usual views.
Use usual views—not subscriber count alone—to plan reach. Test enough videos to learn how a creator performs for your brand instead of judging the partnership from one result.
Inside the report
The data behind the headline numbers
The 16-page report adds the comparisons, denominators, definitions, and limits that turn a market pattern into a useful test idea.
- 01Which brand categories sponsored the most videos
- 02The ten most active sponsor brands in the sample
- 03Where each brand type bought across creator topics
- 04Where the same brands returned on the same channels
- 05How activity and renewal changed by channel size
- 06Why software led activity but not renewal
- 07How sponsored-video views compared with usual views
Methodology
How we built and read the sample
The report maps a fixed sample from Creators Agency's sponsor-detection archive. It does not represent every sponsored YouTube video or promise results for one campaign.
- 10,000sponsored videos in the fixed random sample
- 4,365brand-and-channel pairings in the sample
- 1,948pairings old enough for a full-year renewal check
- 531pairings with an observed renewal
Core definitions
- Observed renewal
- After the first sampled appearance, the same brand appeared again on the same channel within 365 days and more than 60 days after the prior sampled appearance.
- B2B creator topic
- Business, careers, tech, and AI channels. Each channel received one primary-topic classification.
- Business-only brand
- A brand that sells only to businesses. Brands that sell to both people and businesses were kept in a separate group.
Main limits
- Renewal is a signal, not ROI. It does not prove a new contract, sales, profit, or campaign quality.
- The sample has edges. A real return outside the 10,000-video sample is not counted.
- Channel size is current. Usual views are current, not subscriber count or size at the time of the deal.
- Multi-sponsor videos are weighted. Activity is split evenly across sponsors so the weighted total remains 10,000.
Why some renewal-map cells are blank
A brand-and-topic pairing needed at least 30 eligible pairs, five brands, and 20 channels. No one brand could make up more than 40% of the pairs, no one channel more than 15%, and the uncertainty range could not be wider than 30 points. A dash means there was not enough evidence to publish a fair comparison—not zero renewals.
Citation and reuse
Use the numbers. Keep the context.
You may quote the public findings with attribution. Please link to this page so readers can see the sample, definitions, and limits behind the statistic.
Creators Agency. (2026, July 15). 10,000 Sponsored YouTube Videos. Creators Agency Sponsor Intelligence. https://creatorsagency.co/research/10000-sponsored-youtube-videos
Free research report
Get the full 16-page report
Get the designed 16-page PDF with all charts, denominators, interpretations, and research notes.
Check your inbox for the email from Apple. The full PDF is attached.