Play’n Go slot game ads banned for appealing to under 18s

The UK’s Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has upheld three separate complaints after finding that beside email inboxes, supplier Play’n Go ran ads that likely appealed to children.

The first ad showed a cartoon Easter bunny superhero holding a silver egg and a basket of eggs. Play’n Go’s Easter-themed slot ad appeared beside the email inboxes of two children.

A second ad beside an email inbox showed a cartoon robot DJ with a purple screen face and white pixels. The ad was run to promote Play’n Go’s Spinnin’ Records into the Beat slot game.

The final ad promoted Play’n Go’s Moon Princess series of slot games and featured three anime-style cartoon princesses. The ad was seen beside a child’s inbox.

Two complainants challenged whether the ads, which all included Play’n Go’s logo, featured content likely to appeal to people under the legal gambling age of 18 in the UK.

Case for the defence

While Play’n Go believed the images were popular with adults, it did concede they could be appealing to children.

Play’n Go said the advertising was run through a programmatic advertising platform called Adroll.

It stated that during the bidding process for advertising space, the ads were identified as related to gambling to ensure they only served websites that had opted to include gambling ads.

Guilty verdict

The ASA ruled that although Play’n Go’s website didn’t allow direct gambling, the ads still violated the UK’s advertising code.

“We considered that the targeting measures used by Adroll, which relied on self-declaration of age of users entering the Play’n Go website and retargeting based on that data, as well as prospecting targeting using browsing behaviours, were not sufficiently robust to ensure under-18s were entirely excluded from the audience,” the ASA said.

The ASA instructed Play’n Go not to run the ads again in their current form.

iGB has reached out to Play’n Go for comment.