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Today I have some rather upsetting news for you folks. Brace yourselves. Are you sitting? You should sit. Okay. Here goes:
Summer is almost over.
I know, I know. Where does the time go? One minute we’re making plans for beach trips and vacays, and the next we’re staring down Labor Day.
But I’m here to tell you that not all is lost. We’ve still got a few weeks left to soak up the sun and cross off all those summer rituals we haven’t gotten around to yet.
To begin your summermaxxing checklist, let’s do a simple one: when was the last time you had ice cream from…
It’s only natural that one of the world’s most beloved ice cream-centric franchises was founded by a guy named Sherb.
In some ways, the story of Dairy Queen is the story of 20th Century America: heady optimism, a post-war boom, expansion along the major freeways and interstates, and eventual world domination, all underpinned by a love of soft serve. Along the way, DQ has given us so many iconic items, but none more everlasting than the Blizzard.
So needless to say, the brand has made its way into both the general cultural lexicon and our hearts. But one key question remains:
Dairy Queen Creator Count, 2020 - 2025
In terms of overall number of accounts mentioning the brand on global social media, Dairy Queen expanded from 1,639 creators in 2020 to 6,576 creators in 2025, an almost dead-even 4x increase over six years.
After a slight decline in 2021, the brand's creator network resumed growth in 2022, then accelerating significantly over the following three years—a pattern we’ll see echoed across other metrics.
Dairy Queen Post Count, 2020 - 2025
Other metrics such as post count! As you’d expect, this mirrored creator count pretty closely, increasing from 3.4k posts in 2020 to 17k posts in 2025, a nearly dead-even 5x surge. Dairy Queen has a thing for the round numbers.
Once again, we saw posting activity remain relatively stable through 2022, before hitting a major inflection point in 2023. Content volume continued climbing through 2024 and reached a record high in 2025.
Dairy Queen EMV, 2020 - 2025
Now, with Earned Media Value (EMV), a metric that gauges the virality and impact of content in social media conversations, we see things kick into high gear. Dairy Queen’s EMV improved from $7.6M in 2020 to $106M in 2025—once again, an almost exact 14x increase.
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: EMV growth was modest through 2022 before accelerating dramatically in 2023. Dairy Queen nearly tripled its EMV between 2022 and 2023, then continued building momentum through 2024 and 2025. It was a veritable…Blizzard of activity.
Dairy Queen Impressions, 2020 - 2025
But increased viral impact didn’t necessarily align with impressions, as we can see from this somewhat crazy chart. Dairy Queen went from 324.8M impressions in 2020, a rate which proved a bit of a historical outlier, to 1.2B impressions in 2025, a not particularly clean 3.8x increase.
Near as I can tell, and this isn’t exactly a perfect thesis, Dairy Queen garnered a lot of hype for its 2020 Fall Flavors rollout. Maybe that proved a much-needed respite during the height of the pandemic, and I’ve just memoryholed it? Regardless, those numbers were way down in 2021, before rebounding every year since.
Dairy Queen Engagements, 2020 - 2025
Falling somewhere between EMV and impressions were engagements, which saw little variation from 2020 to 2022, then really kicked into gear from 2023 onward. In all, Dairy Queen’s engagements rose from 6.7M in 2020 to 51.1M in 2025.
Dairy Queen's Share of Impressions by Platform, August 2025 - July 2026
Dairy Queen's impression mix is notably balanced across its three largest platforms. Seriously, this is just about as evenly split of a divide as I’ve ever seen. TikTok narrowly leads, with YouTube close behind, while Instagram contributes nearly one-third of overall impressions. This diversified distribution indicates that the brand is generating awareness consistently across multiple major social platforms. YouTube has seen the greatest YoY growth, which intrigues me—a trend we’ll see borne out when we look at the content being generated about Dairy Queen.
Dairy Queen's Share of Engagements by Platform, August 2025 - July 2026
But when it comes to engagements, the picture is a little more clear-cut. TikTok is the obvious leader, accounting for approximately half of all interactions despite generating only about one-third of impressions. Instagram provides a strong secondary source of engagements, while YouTube fades into a distant third. However, YouTube once again owns what’s by far the strongest rate of YoY growth.
This is a very intriguing channel mix, so I’m quite curious to discover…
When I looked at Dairy Queen’s top 1k posts by EMV from August 2025 to July 2026, it became clear pretty quickly that the brand's content ecosystem is dominated by a particular creator archetype: the deal-hunter, snack-tracker, or fast-food news account. These creators have audiences that tune in specifically to learn about limited-time offers, seasonal menu launches, freebies, and promotional events. It’s a pretty cool subculture, and one that I wasn’t previously aware of. But the neat thing about the creator economy is that you learn something new every day.
The top performers in this cluster are remarkably stable. For example, Shob Proth ($5.9M EMV) is a Bangladesh-based Facebook-heavy account that posts product reviews with near-daily frequency. Meanwhile, snackolator ($4.9M EMV) is the most prolific English-language deal tracker, with captions that sometimes read like a Dairy Queen flyer newsletter: "FREE CONE DAY is almost here from Dairy Queen again — on March 19th you can get a free small vanilla cone at participating locations." And if that’s not enough snack-focused content for you, watch out, because here comes Snack Betch ($3.8M EMV), who tends to focus on fast-food menus and new product launches.
The broader deal-hunter cluster reinforces the pattern: Mama Deals ($822k EMV) and jamies_daily_deals ($531k) each announced Free Cone Day across multiple impactful posts, while tayloreatsnyc ($885k EMV) aggregated Dairy Queen content into weekly fast food deal roundups. Mark your calendars for March 19 (that’s what it was this year, anyway), because Free Cone Day is officially Dairy Queen’s signature earned media moment. Plus, you know, free ice cream!
Beyond the deal trackers and snack masters, many of Dairy Queen’s most impactful posts over the last year came from personality-led food content in which the brand served as a vehicle for character, humor, or genuine food obsessions, rather than just deal information.
Food creator and great-account-name-haver ShhhhImEating ($1.7M EMV) generated many of Dairy Queen’s top posts, which ranged from a Cinnamon Toast Crunch dipped cone + fruit pebble shake review, a Swicy Menu mukbang (believe me, it makes sense in the world of food creators), and clearly labeled #ad posts for the Fall Treat Menu and the NEW Swicy Menu. Additionally, @sayehsoltani ($2.2M EMV) emerged as a particularly bold food experimenter, combining Fruit Roll-Ups and soft serve, and Cinnamon Toast Crunch cereal with cones, which I think I’ll have to try. Finally, Kie ($580k EMV) produced a steady mix of labeled #ad posts (Mint Crunchin' Cookie Dipped Cone, Swicy Menu Chicken Strip Basket) alongside organic Cinnamon Toast Crunch dipped cone content, showing that everybody can get in on the fun.
The "DQ Information" format, sure to spark curiosity from digital audiences and creators alike, drove several of Dairy Queen’s top individual posts in the entire leaderboard. For example, @mappelz profiled the McDonald's vs. Dairy Queen signage war starting in 2022 (who knew?), while Zack D. Films explained "Why Dairy Queen Ice Cream Has That Swirl" (now I want to know). CrispyTheory covered "Dairy Queen Bring Your Own Bowl Day" (I’m hearing about this for the first time), while Crash asked "How much FREE ice cream can you get from Dairy Queen” (the real question). These curiosity-bait explainer videos treated the brand's quirks and promotions as inherently interesting subject matter, an organic format boosting Dairy Queen to new heights.
Meanwhile, in a somewhat awkward final paragraph that I saw fit to include anyway, Dairy Queen’s partnership with the MLB ($772k EMV) yielded content like grand slam call-outs tagging @dairyqueen alongside power hitters Kyle Schwarber, Juan Soto, and Mookie Betts. Because the only thing more American than baseball might be an ice cream cone to watch with the game.
*All data, unless otherwise specified, stems from CreatorIQ's public-facing brand leaderboards. We will never share performance metrics from a customer's CreatorIQ profile, or any brand's private information.
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