The ASA Highlight a Disturbing Trend in Online Casino Advertising

One of the priorities of any licensed and regulated online gambling jurisdiction is ensuring the protection of youth and children. To minimise this groups exposure to online gambling nearly all jurisdictions follow similar patterns of restrictions which include:

• No games or advertising which use child-friendly images or characters
• No celebrity endorsements where the celebrity has a young fan base
• No venue or billboard sponsorships near schools and youth-orientated facilities

When it comes to online advertising, especially those ads served via third party ad networks, it becomes a little less clear cut. While an online casino may set specific parameters for its ads with the parent company there is always the chance that unscrupulous site owners may disregard those requirements to maximise their income by serving gambling ads wherever they can get the clicks.

Going Undercover Online

To address this issue the Advertising Standards Authority embarked on a digital undercover project where they created the following six digital avatars:

• Avatars aged as being 6-7 years old
• Avatars aged as being 8-12 years old
• Avatars aged as being 13-16 years old
• Avatars aged as being 18+ years old (adult)
• A shared profile listed as being used by an adult and a child under 12
• Neutral profile where no age or browsing data were shared

These profiles were then used to visit and interact with a range of well-known websites that cater to mixed-age users including YouTube and several other sites where you do not need to log in to an account to view the contents of the site.

 The Disturbing Truth

Over a three-week period, the ASA visited 250 websites via these six avatars and got served more than 27,000 ads, including ads for online gambling, alcohol, and other products not deemed safe for children.

Breaking down the specifics of their findings is concerning:

• 159 age-restricted ads broke ASA regulations
• 35 advertisers placed age-restricted ads on 34 websites and 5 YouTube channels with large child audiences
• 70 gambling ads for 4 operators were served to the ASA child avatars

ASA Chief Executive, Guy Parker, said:

“We call on advertisers to make better use of targeting tools to minimise children’s exposure to dynamically served age-restricted ads. And we call on third parties involved in the distribution of these ads to ensure the data and modelling on which those tools rely are as effective as they can be.”

In reviewing the ad serving balance between the volume of gambling ads served to their child avatars and their adult avatar they found the split to be equal with no skew towards the adult avatar despite the product being one for adults.

The ASA has confirmed this is only the beginning of a year-long project which will see them dig deeper into the how and where child protection guidelines are being abused and may lead to “more prescriptive measures relating to dynamically-served age-restricted ads” if ad providers do not begin addressing how to protect minors from gambling and other restricted ad types.