UKGC And Facebook Team Up For Limiting Gambling Advertisements Shown to Users

United Kingdom Gambling Commission has teamed up with the world’s biggest social network platform, Facebook, in order to create a comprehensive guidance for limiting the amount of gambling-related ads that Facebook users see.

The guidance will cover different ways in which Facebook’s settings and tools can be adjusted by users in order to fine-tune and control what they’re seeing in their feed.

Three Main Points

UKGC is of the opinion…

…that issuing this guidance will help “to mitigate the risk of exposure to gambling-related messaging and advertisements.”

According to UKGC press release, the guidance will include:

• Hide ads - from their Newsfeed, users can control which ads they see to ensure they are relevant and utilise the ‘Why am I seeing this ad?’ feature to hide all ads from a specific advertiser.
• Ad Preferences tool - the different sections within this feature enables users to review advertisers they have recently seen ads from, as well as choosing to see fewer ads about a number of pre-determined topics, and
• Managing data - using the above feature, users can control how their data is used to show ads on and off Facebook, including whether they can be targeted based on certain attributes listed in their profile

At Heart of Activities

Gambling Commission’s advertising technology challenge to the entire gambling industry is what this Facebook consumer guide will follow…

…and, as a result of said challenge, the industry has began to commit to various new practices that are directed at reducing vulnerable audience’s exposure to gambling ads online.

Neil McArthur, The UK Gambling Commission’s CEO, said:

“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.”

Vice President of Global Gaming at Facebook, Rick Kelley, added:

“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.”

Source:

“Gambling Commission partners with Facebook to release guidance aimed at helping consumers limit gambling related adverts on the platform”, gamblingcommission.gov.uk, September 2020.