UK Ad Regulators Come Down on William Hill and Greentube Alderney

UK operators William Hill and Greentube Aldereney got were the recent subjects of some unwanted attention from the UK Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) for their marketing practices. Both companies maintain that they acted in good faith in the matters at question and were let off with with the ASA equivalent of a warning.
The ASA’s cases against William Hill and Greentube Aldereney are, yet more, examples of the increasing attention that UK advertising and gaming regulators are paying to the marketing practices of online casino operators. This uptick in compliance seems especially focused on insuring that operators are not illicitly, or accidentally, marketing their products to minors and problem gamblers.
In the matter of William Hill and Greentube Aldereney, ASA investigators say that both companies illegally marketed to minors via in-app advertising on games such as Dude Perfect 2 and Mario Kart. The ads in question were served up via Google’s Universal App Campaign product. This product is designed to serve ads to site’s that are within the advertiser’s parameters. In both cases, the operators had input preferences that limited their ads to games that accepted real-money gambling (RMG) content. Unfortunately, some of the app makers on whose apps the ads appeared, disabled their RMG content blocks and the ads were inadvertently shown to a broader audience.
In its response, the ASA acknowledged the good faith efforts both companies put into their attempts to keep their advertisements from minors and let them off with a warning. The whole case shows the incredible efforts that operators must take while attempting to remain within compliance on a dense and rapidly changing technological field.