Youtube opens door to more gambling advertising

Gambling companies will, for the first time, be allowed to use masthead advertising on Youtube, as tech giant Google appears to take a step towards the regulated sector.

From October 21 onwards, a new form of advertising on the world’s most popular video platform will be available to the gambling industry.

Google announced earlier this week that it would allow gambling to be advertised via Youtube mastheads, which are high profile ads that run at the top of Youtube homepages and search results.

Companies must have the appropriate licences to advertise in the regions they are targeting, Google said.

The company’s support pages host a long list of specific requirements for each jurisdiction, but in most cases where gambling is locally licensed, any operator that is advertising must be approved by the country’s regulator.

Playing both sides

More freedom to advertise on one of the internet’s most popular websites is a clear win for regulated gambling companies, but licensed providers are not alone in using Youtube to push their wares.

Black market operators have routinely been found to use videos to promote their own content, often operating outside the strict advertising guidelines set by Google and instead try to circumvent those rules by embedding promotion in apparently innocuous videos.

Recent instances include a wide-ranging scam in Korea which used Youtube’s live streaming services to show users apparently winning large sums of money.

Bots were also used to inflate viewer counts and make the videos appear more popular to viewers and Youtube’s content promotion algorithm.

The platform has also been stung for allowing videos promoting gambling onto its sight that breach local gambling regulations, even when it claims to have received them.

A recent decision by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) found that Google is liable for the content of its videos, in cases where the company has entered into a commercial partnership with the creator of the video.

The case stems from Italy, where telecoms regulator AGCOM had attempted to fine the tech giant over its videos that officials say breached the country’s widespread ban on gambling advertising.

Judges said that Google cannot simply be said to be hosting videos, and therefore not be wholly responsible for their content, if the company has any kind of approval sign off or ability to review the videos in question.

Big tech under scrutiny

Regulated online gambling more broadly continues to have a highly complex relationship with big tech and social media.

Google’s fellow US big-tech rival Meta has come in for particularly harsh criticism over the past eight months, due to what both regulators and the industry say are lax approaches to advertising rules that allow the black market easy access to consumers.

Regulators from the UK, France, Brazil and more have called out Mark Zuckerberg’s company for its apparent willingness to allow offshore operators to advertise in markets where they do not have a licence.

Meta claims to have robust content review procedures and provides the ability for stakeholders to report ads they feel may be in breach of local laws.

Critics argue that the review process is too slow and that the pace with which black market operators post new ads, often created rapidly with AI, means that the time in which Facebook or Instagram takes to check an ad the offending operator has already moved on.

This accusation features in a lawsuit recently filed by Dutch trade group VNLOK. It has asked judges in the Hague to call Meta to testify on its approach to gambling advertising.

VNLOK claims to have conducted research that shows more than 90% of the gambling ads on Facebook originate with illegal operators.

“We have repeatedly pointed out the scale of the problem to Meta and asked them to cooperate structurally in finding a solution. That has yielded insufficient results,” said the trade group’s chairman, Björn Fuchs.

Complex future guaranteed

Google remains a vital tool for operators to promote their brands, but in doing so the regulated industry inevitably find itself coexisting in spaces with rivals that break the law in their jurisdictions.

It continues to be relatively easy to find offshore operators through Google searches which are fragrantly breaking local laws and, most insidiously, attempting to attract gamblers who have self-excluded, although the search giant has in recent months attempted to tighten its controls to prevent bad actors from accessing its advertising platforms.

Opening up high profile advertising channels to regulated operators, such as this week’s Youtube masthead changes, help tilt the balance further in favour of the licensed sector, but Google and its peers are certain to continue occupying a murky middle-ground in the push and pull between on- and off-shore gambling.