A kid who got in way over his head with his gaming YouTube channel wound up spending $118,000 on ads using his dad’s corporate credit card.
David Sarkisyan seized control of his nine-year-old son Mike’s channel, Mighty Mike Plays, to release a confession video titled “Mighty Mike Plays is Over.”
In it, Sarkisyan explains how his young son Mike got into making Minecraft and Roblox videos. He didn’t think much of it. It seemed sweet and innocent. The videos Mike uploaded got the single-digit reviews you’d expect from a child’s game-streaming channel. Everything was chugging along just fine, until Sarkisyan was one day asked to explain $118,000 worth of charges on his corporate credit card. After some digging, you figured out the answer.
Sarkisyan had his credit card information tied to his Google account and left the card saved to the account linked to his work files, calendar, email, etc. When Mike got sad that his videos weren’t getting any views, a victim of the cruel YouTube algorithm, Sarkisyan set up a small $20 promotion on YouTube’s Promote tool.
A 9-Year-Old’s Minecraft Channel Reportedly Racked Up $118,000 in Ad Charges
Everything was going smoothly and was under control, until Mike (remember, a small child who doesn’t fully grasp the nuances of Google AdSense and YouTube video promotion budgeting) used the saved credit card information to launch more ad campaigns. Because the saved company card approved every single transaction without requiring secondary authentication, the campaign ran continuously for three weeks.
Three videos blew up, with two soaring past 200,000 views, a raucous success by any measure in the YouTube space. But those views came at a cost: $118,000 in unauthorized ad buys charged to a father’s corporate credit card.
“It’s not just my manager in the room,” Sarkisyan said. “There’s a bunch of people from corporate. There’s financial people. There’s some finances sitting on the laptop. They slide out this table. Full breakdown of ad spend from the past three weeks, apparently.”
“Hey, can you explain the $118,000 that’s been spent on this account?” Sarkisyan recalled being told.
He says the issue is being moved up the corporate chain to members outside the company for review, and what happens next is still to be determined, as he faces possible termination. On the plus side, the video detailing the whole ordeal has, as of the time of writing, 2.1 million views.
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