In an era where digital ad blindness is a growing plague for marketers, the world’s biggest digital creator has decided the best way to get eyes on screens is to start at the dinner table. MrBeast has figured out his next “transformative media channel”: 2.5 million fortune cookies with messages tied to his Beast Games TV show.
According to a campaign launched in January 2026, the YouTube titan turned mogul is leveraging one of America’s most ubiquitous dining rituals to promote Beast Games Season 2: Strong vs. Smart. The initiative, orchestrated by OpenFortune—the company that produces nearly 100% of the fortune cookies distributed in the U.S.—aims to turn the post-meal treat into a high-engagement advertisement.
The strategy: breaking through the digital noise
The logic driving this pivot to pastry is that while brands struggle to generate recall amidst endless digital impressions and overcrowded online platforms, real-world moments often deliver superior engagement. OpenFortune positions the humble fortune cookie as a solution to digital fatigue, describing it as a “transformative media channel” that can bridge physical dining experiences with measurable digital impact.
Shawn Porat, cofounder of OpenFortune, emphasized the unique position of this medium, telling Fortune in a statement: “The fortune cookie is one of the last truly shared media moments people still slow down for, read out loud, and share.”
“It’s intimate, social, and culturally ingrained—everything advertising often isn’t anymore,” he added.
To Porat’s point, OpenFortune shared research that roughly 3 billion fortune cookies are opened each year across restaurants, with a 99% open rate, and 70% of consumers share their fortune at the table, with 6% posting it on social media. This creates a 20× multiplier in secondary impressions and conversation.
The campaign, which rolled out on Jan. 13, involves the distribution of 2.5 million customized cookies. To drive the virality MrBeast is known for, the campaign includes a “Willy Wonka” style element: Among the millions of cookies are 24,000 “rare, limited-edition collectibles” containing fortunes personally written by MrBeast himself.
Bridging the physical and digital worlds
This is not merely about brand awareness; it is a performance marketing play. The MrBeast campaign utilizes QR-driven performance tracking, brand lift studies, and social listening to measure success. By pairing physical distribution with digital tracking, the campaign attempts to answer a critical question facing modern advertisers: What metrics are most important when evaluating real-world engagement versus digital interaction?
The campaign leverages the idea that “collective, in-person attention” changes how brand messages are processed. Unlike a skippable pre-roll ad, a fortune cookie requires active participation. Consumers must physically break the cookie and read the message, an interaction that proponents argue makes the engagement feel “more meaningful” than being passively targeted by an algorithm.
For this story, Fortune journalists used generative AI as a research tool. An editor verified the accuracy of the information before publishing.
