After seeing the success of sports betting in the United States, Google has loosened some of its regulations involving gambling advertising, thus allowing promotional material to be displayed in some states in the US as well as in foreign markets.
The list of states includes Indiana, Iowa, Montana, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island.
Back in June, Google launched a limited beta program that permitted sports betting ads to be shown in the states of Nevada, New Jersey, and West Virginia right after the Supreme Court ruled in favor of legal wagering.
Licensed operators are now free to produce promotional material that could be featured in Google Ads, Google Display Network, YouTube, and AdMob. However, no gambling-related ads would be allowed through Google Ad Manager.
The modification of such rules also comes with a caveat that all advertisements must be sports betting related, and must not include casino games or anything that is deemed to draw in any underage gamblers.
Google has been looking to assess its gambling advertising regulations ever since it approved gambling apps that accepted real money bets in its Google Play store a few years ago.
While only available in a limited number of countries, Google has begun to slowly relent, permitting daily fantasy sports advertising in licensed US states starting in August 2019.
The latest policy update also allows online gambling adverts to be allowed by licensed operators in Columbia, Kenya, and Nigeria.
This means that gambling firms that are looking to operate ads must have the permission of that country’s regulatory body before Google would allow ads to go live.
However, in an intriguing turn of events, Kenya’s government has tried to pass rigorous legislation that would keep operators from promoting on social media. Despite this development, Google has included the country in its latest policy update.
Despite regular updates from Google, it could be difficult for advertisers to stay upright when it comes to following regulations. Online operator Casumo recently fell out of favor with the UK advertising regulator after their advertisements appeared on Google under “how to unsubscribe from all gambling”.
