Five gaming firms in breach of ASA rules on under-18 gambling ads
NetEnt, Evoke Gaming, Unibet, Multilotto and PlayOJO identified by ASA as producing ads that target minors
The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has banned adverts belonging to five gambling operators after an investigation found they were being shown on child-friendly websites.
The ASA investigation was conducted with the use of a “child avatar” which aimed to simulate childrens’ browsing activity online. It revealed adverts belonging to 43 gambling operators were accessible in online environments while not logged in.
Of these 43 ads, the ASA identified adverts belonging to five operators: NetEnt,Evoke Gaming Ltd, Multilotto UK Ltd, Unibet and PlayOJO. In all five cases, adverts were found to have broken rules which prohibit gambling advertising being targeted at individuals under the age of 18.
The ASA research collected data on 10,754 adverts across 24 child-facing websites and across 20 open-access YouTube channels. Gambling adverts were offered to child avatars accessing 11 of the child-facing websites monitored, while 23 individual gambling ads on these sites were viewed a total of 151 times.
Adverts for NetEnt’s Viking videoslot were responsible for 122 of the 151 times adverts were viewed by the child avatars (81%), with NetEnt ads forming 10 of the individual gambling ads viewable. The ASA has confirmed that none of the YouTube channels viewed featured gambling adverts.
The ASA said the operators accepted their ads broke existing rules, with most attributing these instances to errors by third-party companies who served the campaigns on behalf of the operators. All operators have been instructed to take immediate action to review their online adverts and put procedures in place to ensure that they do not target minors again.
ASA CEO Guy Parker hailed the new child avatar project as having more of a real impact. “We’re already looking at expanding this work, as well as exploring how other new technologies can help us protect the public,” Parker added.
The ASA is now exploring whether this monitoring and enforcement approach can be extended to logged-in environments including Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Twitter.