London — Just about a month ago Yahoo UK yielded itself up to UK licensed gambling, with MSN UK following the same, and now its none other than the search engine behemoth Google UK that has succumbed to the pressure to reintroduce gambling ads to Adwords, something that will quickly generate many millions in additional revenue for the search giant.
The search engine giant will from Friday allow Bookmakers and online casinos to place advertisements to target internet users in Britain once they enter specific words into the search panel.
The timing of the decision has enraged politicians and religious groups.
The company, which yesterday received royal support when the Queen visited its British headquarters near Victoria station, was condemned as “irresponsible” by MPs and church leaders for lifting its four-year ban and allowing gambling companies to buy “sponsored links” on its site in Britain.
Google insisted that all advertisers using the service would have to be regulated in Britain or Europe and would have to be registered with the Gambling Commission, as well as any company based within the European Economic Area (EEA) provided they are registered with their national regulator.
The volte-face comes 16 months after the search giant enforced… a blanket ban on all forms of gambling advertising on AdWords, such as for bingo, casino and play-for-fun sites. Google will maintain its ban on gambling ads on the rest of its worldwide sites.
The early ban was imposed as part of a company-wide, global move Google said at the time, but now the company’s industry head James Cashmore said it was ensuring that local markets were served in the appropriate manner.
Cashmore said: “Dennis Woodside (Google VP and MD for UK, Benelux & Ireland) and the team have been reviewing policies both from a legal and user need point of view at a local level.” “I definitely think that local markets will make more decisions in the future.”
But critics denounced the move, saying the adverts could attract people hit by the global economic downturn.
Peter Kilfoyle, the former Labor defense minister, said the timing of the move was “extraordinary”.
He said: “I think it is extraordinary that a major global company should seek, at this time, to promote gambling on its internet site.”
Figures released this week by gambling addiction charity Gamcare show a large increase in the number of people who feel they have a problem. They reported that annual calls to their helpline rose 25 per cent to just below 38,000 last year. The average debt of people who rang for help was over £17,500.
The Church of England led attacks on the decision, which came a day after figures were released showing a 25 per cent increase in people seeking help with gambling problems.
A CofE spokesman said: “Whatever people are searching for on Google, it probably is not the chance to risk developing a serious problem that could have a hugely negative effect on themselves and their family. As people are facing more financial uncertainty, the fantasy of instant wealth could become particularly attractive and the consequences of losses correspondingly serious.”
The move will allow a huge number of non-UK companies, such as Gibraltar-based 888.com and PartyGaming to increase their push into the British market.
“Over the last few months we have been reviewing our gambling advertising policy in Great Britain to ensure it is as consistent as possible with local business practices,” said Cashmore.
“Following a major internal review we have decided to amend our policy to allow text ads to appear against search queries related to gambling in Great Britain.”
Rules and the Application Process from Google can be found here :
Gaming operators have been advised to create a new account specifically for gambling-related campaigns (even if they already advertise with Google), and then apply by filling out a form and making various legal declarations.
Ads can only be targeted to England, Scotland and Wales. Failure to comply with this rule may result in account termination. Affiliates need to comply with these rules too, so be careful out there.
Google said the adverts will be automatically classified as “non-family safe” so that they will not appear in searches if the user has applied the company’s “safe search” filter.
The move to only allow adverts from companies within the EEA follows a government ban on about 1,000 non-EEA gambling websites advertising in the UK. The ban hit the operations of well-known bookmakers including William Hill Casino, Betfred Casino and Poker and Littlewoodscasino.com.
Although the new policy will open things up, there have been plenty of gambling ads on Google during the ban. A misspelling can do wonders. This can be seen today. A search on “online gambling” produced no results, but a cheeky typo makes all the difference.
Anybody who types in “online gmabling” will see ads from brands such as 888, Cantor Casino, Bet 365, with ad text that leaves nothing to the imagination: “New Customers Double Your First Deposit Up to £100 – Exclusive Here”.
The move is expected to open up a new keywords bidding war, with companies seizing the opportunity to tap into a potentially lucrative new sales vertical.
The Salvation Army said the move was “effectively encouraging vulnerable people into debt” warning that it contributed to a “creeping normalization” of gambling in society.
A spokesman said: “With widespread use of the internet, use of online lotteries and betting opportunities are increasing. And with 16- to 24-year-olds among the most frequent users of the internet, it is not unrealistic to be concerned this group will be particularly affected by this poor decision.”
This is also another sign that the worldwide economic state is hitting the search marketing divisions of these content producers and search engines in their pockets. Lifting the Google UK ban could bring an extra boost of hundreds of millions of dollars to Google, or perhaps even closer to a billion, in a time of economic crisis.
And if things do go awry then perhaps we can expect to see Google opening up Adwords even more. As well as the loosely-policed gambling “ban,” there are all kinds of other ads that Google theoretically does not allow, from anabolic steroids to escort services.
However this same misspelling loophole seems to apply to all kinds of “banned” advertisements.