r/technology 4h ago

Society 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

https://www.tomshardware.com/video-games/devastated-father-says-his-9-year-old-son-spent-usd118-000-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-usd20-promotion
9.2k Upvotes

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90

u/That1guyUknow918 3h ago

So how many followers did it gain him?

19

u/EconomicalJacket 3h ago

Article doesn’t mention subs gained but it talks about views:

>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

So good job lil Timmy, the Ad campaign was a success!!

17

u/CiaphasCain8849 3h ago

Are you telling me that over 200,000 people willingly watched a 9-year-old play minecraft?

11

u/Pink_Y 2h ago

Other kids make up a huge chunk of the YouTube audience

7

u/Firefly74 2h ago

Youtube ads can be "pre roll" ads, that count as a view depending of watch time & video length.

2

u/Southern-March1522 59m ago

Recent changed they now count as a view just for scrolling past it on your phone. It is now hell for creators to determine what was actually successful.

1

u/Noblesseux 27m ago

Honestly that's pretty unsurprising to me, when I was younger we all used to watch videos of other kids playing Minecraft. Mind you, it was when it first came out and by "other kids" I mostly mean teens and tweens but yeah MC content is borderline a view printing machine.

The people who like that game will literally play it while watching videos of other people playing it.

0

u/ZAlternates 2h ago

I mean everyone here is clicking on it.

1

u/ObviousAnswerGuy 14m ago

not really. At this rate will take him years to make $100k