Old Navy is using gift cards as part of its back-to-school collaboration with MrBeast, placing a familiar retail reward inside entertainment built for a creator’s audience. Students answering meme-themed trivia received cash and Old Navy gift cards, according to Marketing Dive’s September 11 report. [S01]

For gift-card operators, the interesting question is what happens after the video. A campaign can generate attention, while the card gives a recipient a separate reason to shop. Those are different outcomes, and the figures disclosed so far measure the first much more clearly than the second.

The early results are attention metrics

The company shared three early indicators with Marketing Dive. These measure audience response to the campaign with MrBeast, whose name is Jimmy Donaldson, rather than gift-card redemption. [S01]

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The early results are attention metrics

Company-reported measure

Reported result

What it measures

Online kids’ assortment traffic

More than 22% increase

Visits in the days immediately following launch

Campaign video views worldwide

More than 100 million

Video consumption, not unique shoppers

YouTube impressions

1.4 billion

Content exposure, not completed purchases

Source: company figures reported by Marketing Dive. These measures have different units and should not be added together. The report does not establish a gift-card redemption rate, incremental gift-card sales or campaign profitability. [S01]

A view is not a customer, an impression is not a visit, and a visit is not a transaction. Without a disclosed comparison group or a breakdown of paid and organic distribution, the published totals cannot isolate how much of the response came from the gift cards themselves.

Why the retailer is watching traffic

The campaign arrives after a weaker quarter for the brand. In its official results for the quarter ended August 1, 2026, parent Gap Inc. reported Old Navy net sales of $2.1 billion, down 4% year on year, and a 4% decline in comparable sales. It attributed the performance to softer women’s seasonal merchandise and an unexpected slowdown in traffic. [S02]

Those quarterly sales figures and the later campaign traffic numbers cover different periods and different measures. They cannot be used to calculate a turnaround or a return on marketing spending. The relevant commercial question is whether renewed interest eventually produces purchases and repeat visits, after accounting for the cost of reaching and rewarding customers.

The card is the connection to a shopping trip

Old Navy’s ordinary U.S. gift-card product can be used online and in stores across Old Navy, Gap, Banana Republic and Athleta. The retailer says that product has no expiry date or service fees and cannot be redeemed for cash except where the law requires it. These are the published terms of the standard retail product, not independently confirmed terms for every prize distributed in the campaign. [S03]

That distinction matters in promotional gifting. The campaign’s public reach and the usefulness of a recipient’s reward are separate design decisions. A useful evaluation would track cards awarded, activated and redeemed, the time until use, and spending above the card’s value. None of those campaign-specific figures is established by the disclosed audience totals.

A continuing relationship, with execution still to prove

Damon Berger, who leads shared marketing services at Gap Inc., publicly confirmed the partnership and credited Old Navy’s internal team for delivering it. His post identifies a continuing collaboration rather than a one-day giveaway. [S04]

There is also a leadership transition ahead. Gap Inc. announced that Michael Francis will become Old Navy’s president and CEO on November 2, 2026, succeeding Haio Barbeito. That is a future effective date, not a change that had already taken place when the September campaign results were reported. [S05]

The immediate lesson for the gift-card industry is practical: rewards can form part of creator entertainment without becoming the whole proposition. The evidence supports strong reported exposure for the collaboration. Whether the reward mechanism created additional profitable demand remains a question for later transaction and redemption data.