
Lauren Leak-Smith
Senior Advisor
The ultimate goal of advertising is to influence behaviour. That is, to encourage people to take a particular action.
Like other sectors, the UK gambling industry appears to be trying to entice customers at a massive scale, spending more than £1.5 billion in advertising every year. Existing evidence suggests that this advertising encourages gambling, and may lead to risky behaviour.
But we don’t know what specific features or contents of adverts are influencing people’s actions and how conscious people are of the risks or implications of their choices. BIT’s Gambling Policy & Research Unit has developed a new, rigorous methodology that will help us to answer these questions.
We conducted a content analysis of 100 real online slot game adverts that were live on Facebook and Instagram.
A mock-up of a typical slot game advert (defined by features that were present in >50% of our sample, or the next most prevalent).
We found dozens of design features leveraging behavioural biases across the 100 adverts which could be negatively impacting gambling behaviour. A lack of transparency was a common element, appearing in the form of:
To hone in on what we should test in part 2 of our study, we used existing behavioural science evidence and feedback from the Committee of Advertising Practice. We also consulted our Steering Group, broader network of policymakers, and our GPRU team to shortlist what to test next. The features fall into three groups:
We plan to test these features against a “typical” advert and one designed with good practices in mind. Our goal is to understand if these features affect customers’ perceptions and behaviour beyond the expected commercial impact of an ad.
To meaningfully reduce harm, we should understand every touchpoint of a person’s journey with gambling—from seeing advertising to interacting with operators themselves.
This methodology has provided us with the findings we need to now design and run an online randomised controlled trial to test specific features. The results will reveal whether these features hold the potential to cause harm, and help shape future policy for the gambling market. In the meantime, you can explore the full report of our slot ad content analysis here.
Senior Advisor
Senior Advisor
Advisor
Research Advisor
Senior Advisor
Design and development by Soapbox.