Like it or not, the online gambling industry in the United States has been flourishing lately. More countries are joining the race by legalizing online casinos and introducing online sportsbooks as well.
Google has seen the increasing potential in the industry and plans to change its policies related to online gambling to allow paid advertising to take place via this platform.
According to the company, they want to remove the online casino ads ban in the first quarter of 2020, looking forward to taking advantage of the growing industry.
Growing But Held Back
Online gambling is not a new thing in the US, as some states legalized it back in 2013. New Jersey, Nevada, and Delaware immediately started making a profit from this type of online entertainment, but they stumbled upon an odd problem: The inability to actually promote online businesses such as online casinos.
Namely, Google was really strict when it came to promoting any kind of gambling via its platform. Basically, there was none allowed. However, the company started to “soften up” with time, up to the point where they made a concrete change in plans.
The ban that has been active for years could be lifted very soon. As soon as a couple of months, as a matter of fact.
One of the reasons why Google decided to move that way was actually the legalization of sports betting. In May 2018, the ban which was put on sports betting in the US was lifted after almost two decades, meaning that individual states were able to introduce this type of gambling activity into their standard gambling offer.
Google was quick to respond, and immediately changed its policy towards this type of ads, allowing them to take place. As of October, Google now allows sports betting ads in Montana, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Indiana.
The only state which was allowed to place ads even before that was New Jersey, which is currently one of the most dominant states in the area of sports betting and online casinos. Online gambling operators now have an opportunity to use Google AdWords and place ads that can reach their potential customers in the area.
This change was announced by Chris Harrison, who currently has the position of the Head of Financial Trading and Egaming at Google. He stated that all platforms which have an operating license and offer online gambling in New Jersey actually applied for AdWords.
This isn’t the first time that online gambling restrictions for ads were lifted in a country, as Google allowed Nigeria, Kenya, and Colombia to place ads using their Ads platform.
Major Influence
Google plays a very important role in our lives. In a weird way, the type of content that we get is dictated by this search engine, which has become much more than that in the last decade. Ads by Google are basically everywhere.
If you use Android phones, the chances are that your apps already have a lot of ads that are placed there by a powerful targeting algorithm. Moreover, YouTube videos, various sites, and many other platforms feature ads by Google.
In other words, the fact that Google is opening up towards the gambling industry could be a really big deal for the industry, and it can affect it deeply.
This is very important for the marketing teams of every online casino or sportsbook, as they will have to come up with new strategies to promote their services online. Those could also include paid online advertisements that they would have to place using Google’s services, such as Google AdWords.
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