ASA reports decline in children’s exposure to TV gambling ads
Recent data from the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) on the frequency of gambling-related TV commercials seen by children reveals a sharp decline in exposure.
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Ladbrokes first to break ASA’s rule on youth-appealing ads
Ladbrokes is the first operator to be found in breach of the Advertising Standards Authority’s new guidelines on ads appealing to children.
Back in October the gambling operator posted an advertisement on Twitter featuring several Premier League players. This post is what sparked the ASA’s interest and led them to investigate the matter further.
Earlier in the year the ASA had updated its guidelines to ban any advertisements that significantly appealed to children, moving away from the previous system that only took proportions of adults and children into effect. With the new standards any promotional materials that attract a significant number of underage people will be banned.
In their guidelines the ASA specifically mentioned that in the majority of cases Premier League footballers could not be mentioned or featured in advertisements, unless the advertising operator could reliably target it to adults only.
Ladbrokes responded to the investigation, stating that they restrict the viewing age of their entire social media account to 18 and above, and targeted their promotional post to people of the age of 25 and above as a way to not accidentally advertise to underage users.
However, the ASA was not satisfied with the response, stating that Twitter’s age verification solution is unreliable at the best of times and that those types of ads should not appear on the platform at all. The standards organization’s final verdict is that the post should be brought into compliance before being used for promotional campaigns again.
Four additional Ladbrokes ads taken down by ASA
Several additional Ladbrokes advertisements have recently been taken down by the ASA.The four violating advertisements in question were promoted Twitter posts, with the...
