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Gambling Commission Partners with Facebook for Safer Advertising
By Jeff Osienya Oct 01, 2020 IndustryThe Gambling Commission (UK) has linked up with Facebook to progress its agenda of fostering safety for gambling advertising online. Users can now tweak their profile settings to limit the ads they see and how their data is used for advertising.The United Kingdom Gambling Commission (UKGC), UK’s gambling regulator, and Facebook, the word’s largest social media platform, have teamed up to launch new gambling advertising guidance for users on Facebook. These measures involve restricting the number of gambling-related advertisements that Facebook users view to mitigate the risk of getting exposed to ads and messages about gambling.
Highlights of the New Facebook-UKGC Consumer Handout
Based on the new guidance, Facebook users are empowered to take advantage of a range of safety tools and settings on their accounts so that they can adjust what they can and cannot see on their Newsfeed while on the platform. Some of the settings that Facebook users can tweak include;
- Hide Ads: Through the ‘why am I seeing this ad?’ feature on Facebook, users will be able to adjust the ads that they can view on their feed to make sure that they are relevant advertisements.
- Ad Preferences: This tool will allow end-users on Facebook to review the ads that they have recently viewed and effectively choose to see less advertisements about specific subjects.
- Data Management: Another crucial feature of the ad preferences tool also involves letting users take control of how data collected from their Facebook profile is used to promote advertisements on and off the social media platform. For instance, the users can choose whether specific elements of data collected from their profiles can be used to promote targeted advertisements to them.
The new consumer guide rolled out by Facebook in conjunction with the UKGC is part of the gaming ombudsman’s game plan for 2020/2021 under the advertising technology challenge. Overall, these new measures are part of the regulator’s commitment to reduce exposure of internet-based gambling advertisements through the introduction of new, more effective safer gambling measures.
Facebook and UKGC Executives Chime In
After the new consumer guide was announced, Neil MacArthur, the Chief Executive Officer of the UKGC came forward to reiterate the regulator’s stand on gambling harm via online advertising media by saying;
Quote“Protecting children and vulnerable people from being harmed or exploited by gambling is at the heart of what we do, which is why I challenged the industry to look at how they can make better use of technology to prevent gambling-related content and adverts being seen by those individuals… Partnering with Facebook to produce this guidance is a welcome step for us in order to offer consumers clear, practical advice, and I hope that this will help them limit the gambling-related content they see when using the platform.”
Likewise, Rick Kelley, Facebook’s Vice President of Global Gaming echoed UKGC’s statement by saying that;
Quote“Facebook is committed to supporting a safe and transparent environment for people to control their experiences on our platform. We’re delighted that our partnership with the Gambling Commission will help operators to implement advertising campaigns responsibly, while helping to protect the people who use our services.”
However, this is not the first time that UK’s Gambling Commission has joined forces with a dominant social media platform in a bid to enhance safer online advertising in the industry. Last year, the UK gaming ombudsman partnered with Twitter, another social media giant, to unveil similar guidance for end-users on the platform
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