Learn how to – How To Block Gambling Ads on Facebook

Learn how to – How To Block Gambling Ads on Facebook.

Facebook has been the UK most popular social media platform with users dedicating 2.3 hours a day on average to it. This has become a golden ticket for gambling operators to advertise themselves on the platform with greater success. However, not all users share the same enthusiast as they are getting bombarded with gambling advertisement impressions. As stated at CasinoGap.org, some advertisements of casinos not on Gamstop and others may be harmful to players. Players who are looking for non Gamstop operators may face compulsive behaviour practises. These ads are turning not only annoying but also becoming a risk for those looking to protect themselves and vulnerable relatives from the consequences of problem gambling.

Facebook is the leading social media platform with currently 2.7 billion users. It is estimated that an average of 2.3 hours a day is spent on the platform making it an extraordinary time gap for advertisers to promote their product and services. Gambling is no exception since it is getting cornered in the UK thanks to several UKGC restrictions such as a total ban of advertisement in television translating in a greater intensity on the remaining mediums to keep marketing themselves.

An IPSOS MORI study revealed that on average 65% of children and 69% of young adults have at least one gambling-related advertisement impression. The use of celebrity endorsement, humour, and depiction of a glamorous lifestyle quickly draws their attention. Especially in the most deprived sector where economic burden is found and gambling is seen as a source of income, rather than entertainment.

To protect the young and vulnerable Facebook and the UKGC partnered to provide a solution and reduce their exposure to gambling advertisements.

Know How it Works

Facebook algorithms are optimized to promote adverts adapted to your interests and content search, not only with the social media giant but also for third party web searches. It is up to you and your search activity the reason why you are having certain advertisement impressions. If you navigate to gambling related content it will get reflected proportionally according to the frequency you interact with that type of content.

Although it is impossible to eliminate all gambling advertisements directly from Facebook there are several methods to put at their bare minimum their presence.

Hold that thumbs up

Every like and subscribe counts to create a custom profile to which Facebook can address its advertisement.  The best you can do is unfollow all your gambling-related pages and profiles, Even jokes and memes No matter how funny they might be, just ditch any content related to gambling as it will keep building preferences and making it burdensome to remove again.

Changing your preferences

Ad preferences

This option allows you to edit all preferences concerning content based on your search profile from Facebook or external sources. This modification will affect the type of content but not the number of ads you’ll keep seeing.

To access it you must simply follow this path

Account=> settings & privacy=>settings=>ads

This route will enable you to change all your ad preferences from advertisers if they are related to gambling or other sensible content just by marking the “hide ads” button. This will make your ads clear from gambling as TV after gambling ban. Other categories you will find are:

Ad topics

You will find a list of topics that you can filter to reduce its presence just removing it.

Ad setting

 This will display another list of options to change

Data about your activity from partners

Facebook holds agreements with several third-party companies from external pages to promote their content and products being gambling among them. If you ever interact with a page can be related to gambling content this will get displayed. Choosing un-allow will eliminate any personalized ads based on your external activities.

Categories used to reach you

It will display the following another sub-list

Interest categories

Again, based on your activities certain categories will keep appearing in the list even if you only glimpse then once. Just like a clean garden must be unwed regularly, to keep yourself free from gambling ads you must regularly uncheck all gambling-related categories that appear.

Other categories

Advertisers are persistent and will keep showing ads not only related to your preferences but also from the people on your friend list. Removing yourself from a category prevents advertisers from reaching you and your contacts but won’t affect the number you will keep seeing.

Audience-based advertising

On a larger scale, Facebook advertisers can show their ads to certain audiences based on your activities with commercial partners based on your information and off-Facebook activity. This is the hardest part since you have to remove manually every single gambling provider But that effort will indeed pay dividends in the long run.

While it is an almost impossible task to escape from all adverts on Facebook, we must take greater self-awareness from the activities we engage to reduce our exposition to harmful/unwanted adverts. This by no means is intended to be a call to paranoia, but the better we know ourselves, the less we are likely to blame others for the things we have control over.