National Strategy to Reduce Gambling Harms
Published findings from the first monitoring sweep in a year-long project to identify and tackle age-restricted ads appearing in children’s media (ASA)
Updates
November 2020
ASA have published the findings from their online monitoring sweep to identify and tackle age-restricted ads appearing in children’s media.
Advertisers placing age-restricted ads online are required, under the Advertising Code, to target their ads away from child audiences.
In the first phase of a year-long project, the ASA undertook a CCTV-style watch and prioritised identifying and tackling online ads for gambling and other priority products such as alcohol, e-cigarettes and tobacco, weight control products and high in fat, salt or sugar products.
Monitoring took place over a three month period, using tools to capture ads served on a sample of over 50 websites and YouTube channels attracting a disproportionately high child audience.
For gambling, they found that 70 different betting ads from 4 gambling operators appeared on 8 websites.