Gambling is one of the areas where the ASA monitors ads closely, because of the potential for harm if ads break the rules, especially for vulnerable groups and children. Further improvements in our AI-based monitoring mean during this World Cup we’ll be watching more closely than ever, in fact our systems have already scanned over 13k gambling ads since the tournament started.
Over the past year we’ve been enhancing our Active Ad Monitoring system, which uses AI to proactively check online ads for problems. We’ve used these AI tools to check gambling ads in the past. For example, when the rules around appeal to children were strengthened in 2022, our AI based monitoring helped us check advertisers were following them, and we took quick and effective action in the small number of cases where we found issues.
This year the improvements we’ve made mean we’ve been able to greatly expand our sweeps of gambling-related ads online. We are now monitoring over 10k online paid ads by UK-licensed gambling operators every month, and using AI to check each of these against the complete set of gambling rules in the Advertising code.
Our monitoring is built on top of the same AI technology people use every day in tools like ChatGPT and Gemini. As we’ve all seen this technology get smarter, the ASA has not only expanded the number of ads we check, we’ve also developed increasingly complex tools that are more accurate at spotting issues. Our scans now use a sophisticated “agentic” AI model that can identify a wide range of potential issues with an ad, and then search for relevant previous ASA decisions to help pin down exactly where it falls in relation to the rules. Ads that are flagged as high risk are then passed on to our gambling experts, who still always make the final decision about whether action is needed.
Our enhanced monitoring continues to show us that the vast majority of paid online ads by licensed gambling operators follow the rules. However, in the small number of cases where we have found issues, we’ve taken action. We’ve just published a ruling on an ad our AI spotted that contained imagery that appeals to under-18s. And while our published rulings are our most visible work, much more has happened behind the scenes. So far this year we’ve taken action on 17 gambling ads that broke the rules and which were identified by our AI systems.
Our Active Ad Monitoring system will keep scanning ads through the rest of the tournament and beyond. And we’ll continue to work with the gambling industry to ensure their ads follow the rules, and take action if we find ads that don’t.
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