Targeting the vulnerableNew research my colleagues and I have carried out identified two fundamental problems for the regulation ofgambling advertising online.First, we found that the automation of advertising placements through ad exchanges leads to adverts being targeting at children and vulnerable people.

Through these exchanges, run by tech giants such as Google andFacebook, online advertising is targeted at viewers based on an online profile linked to their previous consumption and browsing patterns.The fundamental difference to offline advertising is this data matching process is driven by artificial intelligence and machine learning.

This is built in such a way that the more likely a particular user is to click on an ad, the more it costs a company to advertise to them and so the more money the company hosting the advert will make.

This placement process follows statistical criteria based on probability and hard economics, with little regard to ethical or legal standards.In practice, what this means is that if a user’s online profile indicates they have potentially addictive behaviour, are unemployed, have low socio-economic standing, debt issues, or past episodes of problem gambling, they are more likely to be shown gambling ads while visiting non-gambling content online.

A 2017 investigation by The Guardian found gambling companies were using third-parties to harvest information from people who enter prize draws and similar competitions in order to target people on low incomes with gambling advertising.This automation process also makes it likely that social responsibility standards and ethical considerations are being seriously undermined and that advertising is targeting children and the vulnerable.With concerns growing that children and vulnerable people are being targeted by rogue online gambling advertising, my new research suggests the current sanctions aren’t enough to change the practices of online advertisers.In April 2019, the UK’s Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) ran an experiment using an advertising avatar, an online identity which mimicked the internet use of a child.

A 2017 survey by the Gambling Commission found that 12% of children aged 11 to 16 had gambled with their own money in the previous week, and that 0.9% of children were problem gamblers.In the wake of its experiment, the ASA announced a change to its guidelines stipulating that online gambling advertising must not be targeted at minors and must not appear on sections of websites of high interest to children.