Devastated father says his 9-year-old son spent $118,000 on YouTube ads

1. Video Games

Devastated father says his 9-year-old son spent $118,000 on YouTube ad campaigns for his Minecraft channel using a company credit card — bill racked up in just three weeks was supposed to be one $20 promotion

The button said approved every time as nobody had set a limit.

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A father says his 9-year-old son spent $118,000 on YouTube ad campaigns for his Minecraft and Roblox gameplay videos over about three weeks, all charged to a company credit card the father had saved to his own Google account, which his son also used. The father, who identifies himself only as Dave, described the incident in a video titled “Message from Dad…Mighty Mike Plays is Over.” posted to the boy’s channel on Sept. 15. Dave said he was called into a meeting with his manager, corporate staff, and finance and shown the advertising charges.

Mighty Mike Plays (@MightyMikePlays67) is a 9-year-old’s Minecraft and Roblox gameplay channel with about 24,000 subscribers and 182 uploads as of early Sept. 16. Dave said it started when the boy was around 8, streaming straight from a PS5 with a cheap headset and no editing. Early videos got 5 to 11 views, he said. Dave said he entered the company card himself to buy Robux for his son, and it then sat saved on the Google account that also carries his work email, calendar, and files. Dave did not say why he used the company card for that purchase.

Dave said that after the boy complained about views, he set up a roughly $20 promotion and talked through the steps aloud: set a budget, select who sees the ads, hit run. The boy then created his own campaigns, and Dave said his son did not understand the $20 as a limit. “The credit card, it just says approved every single time,” Dave said in the video. Finance showed him three weeks of ad spend totaling $118,000 on campaigns titled “Mighty Mike,” “Epic Roblox,” and Minecraft gameplay.

Three of the promoted videos reached around 200,000 views. As of a check at 12:26 a.m. ET on Sept. 16, the channel’s three most-viewed gameplay videos stood at 260,000, 224,000, and 178,000 views, with a run of uploads above 1,000 views and most of the rest under 100. Four days before Dave’s video, the boy had posted a video titled “NeverMyFault made a Short about my Ad?” about another creator noticing one of his promotions; it had about 70,000 views.

Dave said the matter has been escalated and he does not yet know whether he will get to keep his job or have to repay the costs.

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Google’s own help pages say a payment method entered for any Google purchase is stored in a payments profile tied to the Google Account and is offered again for the next purchase. The profile is also shared across Google Ads and other Google products. YouTube’s Promote tool, which Google describes as a simplified version of Google Ads, walks a creator through a goal, an audience, a budget, and an end date. Dave did not say which interface his son used, but the steps he described match Promote’s. Google Ads does not allow users under 18, but the account was the father’s.

In a separate case, the FTC announced on Sept. 4, 2014, that Google would refund at least $19 million to parents billed for children’s unauthorized in-app purchases on Google Play, and required it to get express consent before billing. That covered Google Play, not Google Ads. Dave said the family will remove saved payment details, add spending caps, and set up parental controls, and that the channel is paused until “real guard rails” are in place.

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Shane Downing is a Freelance Reviewer for Tom’s Hardware US, covering consumer storage hardware.

• TheBeastFromOz Dave is an idiot and deserves to lose his job. Reply
• hotaru251 giving your single digit child access to use ANY credit card is a mistake.
  
  If they need to use one...make them have you do it every time.
  A child doesnt understand value of $.
  
  also "or if he'll have to pay it back"
  i mean corpo aint gonna let you cost em 6 digits and get away....heck they could go for more as you used corpo card for your child's hobby. Reply
• Stomx Many years ago, when regular phone calls to foreign countries cost an arm and a leg, my 2-year-old kid, still learning to speak, somehow managed to spend my entire year's salary finding a friend in… India. At that age he was already on level 77 of Doom II, so they definitely had something to talk about. Reply
• JJADDAMS We all know who is at fault here. Spend more time with your son and stop letting his games be the baby sitter. Reply
• DRagor I honestly don't understand. Parents still (I hope) know that sending your kid alone on the street is dangerous, why they can't understand it's the same about internet? Reply
• gggplaya How is buying Robux on the company credit card a legitimate expense, dad can get fired for that alone? Reply
• R Gaming

  JJADDAMS said:We all know who is at fault here. Spend more time with your son and stop letting his games be the baby sitter.

  You clearly didn't watch the video. Dave admits fault and he didn't use it as a babysitter. Reply
• Roland Of Gilead And to think, if only Dave clicked the button after the first purchase, saying ' Do not save these card details' would have saved a lot of hassle here. Reply
• PEnns

  Stomx said:Many years ago, when regular phone calls to foreign countries cost an arm and a leg, my 2-year-old kid, still learning to speak, somehow managed to spend my entire year's salary finding a friend in… India. At that age he was already on level 77 of Doom II, so they definitely had something to talk about.

  
  He was playing Doom at the age of 2 ?? Reply
• usertests

  PEnns said:He was playing Doom at the age of 2 ??

  I suspect it's a meta-commentary on the suspicious nature of this story. Reply