A 9-year-old boy allegedly spent $118,000 on YouTube advertising campaigns to promote his Minecraft and Roblox videos using his father’s company credit card, according to the boy’s father.
The father, identified as Dave, described the incident in a video posted on the Mighty Mike Plays YouTube channel, which was created for his son to share his interest in Minecraft and Roblox.
The spending reportedly began after Dave helped his son create a small YouTube advertising campaign costing $20. He said he showed the boy how to set a budget, select an audience and launch an advertisement after the child became frustrated that his channel was not receiving many views or subscribers.
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Dave said his company card had previously been saved to the Google account associated with his work email and other services. Mike allegedly returned to the advertising tools and began creating additional campaigns himself, not understanding that the initial $20 was intended as a spending limit.
“He didn’t really register that was supposed to be some kind of limit in his head,” Dave said. “The logic was simple, I guess. More money, more views.”
Dave also said that he discovered the issue after being called into a meeting with his manager, corporate representatives and finance employees. During the meeting, he was shown advertising expenses from the previous three weeks that reportedly totaled $118,000 on the company card.
The campaigns were allegedly connected to videos featuring names such as “Mighty Mike,” “Epic Roblox” and Minecraft gameplay. Dave said three promoted videos had accumulated approximately 200,000 views.
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Dave said he did not know at the time of the video whether the company would seek reimbursement or whether his employment would be affected. He accepted responsibility for leaving the payment details accessible and said the family planned to remove saved payment information, introduce spending limits and activate parental controls.
Dave’s account, including the $118,000 spending figure and the company’s response, has not been independently verified.
The Mighty Mike Plays YouTube channel will also be paused while the family reviews the situation.
In a separate case, the Federal Trade Commission announced on Sept. 4, 2014, that Google would refund at least $19 million to parents who had been billed for children’s unauthorized in-app purchases on Google Play and would require the company to obtain express consent before billing. However, that settlement concerned Google Play purchases, not Google Ads.