Finding the compliant approach with marketing messages

The UK compliance landscape is finally showing some signs of settling down as both operators and affiliates better understand the compliance guidelines being handed down by the regulatory authorities. This has been helped by the fact that many operators have now been through at least one UK Gambling Commission (UKGC) audit that has examined their efforts in affiliate compliance and made it easier to understand just what is expected of them.

It’s stating the obvious to say that keeping an audit trail of the issues found, along with the actions taken in following up with affiliates who cross the line, is the best way of dealing with the commission’s audits but what has also become apparent from feedback is that the UKGC regards certain issues a lot more important than others.

A prime example of this is also one of the hardest to track: marketing messages that intimate to a player that gambling can have a positive impact on their lives. We’ve recently seen a noticeable increase in requests to provide reports that look for these “life changing” terms and it’s clear that monitoring affiliate activity in this area is no longer an option for operators. But that isn’t necessarily a straightforward task with technology as many of the messages need an element of interpretation to determine intent.

For example, a search for ‘get rich quick’ is equally as likely to turn up the phrase “don’t ever think that gambling is a ‘get rich quick’ scheme” on a web page as it is the opposite. Nonetheless, operators need to demonstrate to the UKGC or Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) that they are actively monitoring for these issues and even an audit trail containing false positives can be beneficial should an issue arise, or an auditor come calling.

Thankfully, the really gory stories are few and far between but in areas where large sums of money can be won, it is still a problem. Unfortunately, this is also where a level of interpretation comes in. Is it wrong for an affiliate to say to a player that if they gamble and win it can change their life? And if so, what sort of message does it send out when the National Lottery is posting articles like this on their website? It’s obvious why there is still some confusion over what constitutes compliance in some areas.

We recently discovered a fake news article that had been cloned and disseminated via third party advertising platforms and as a result were appearing on popular sites such as the UK’s The Sun newspaper that claimed players were taking advantage of a loophole in online casinos to win vast sums. In the article was a link which behaved differently depending on the country you viewed it from. In some scenarios, it became an affiliate link to (more than one) gambling operator and in others it didn’t. To make life worse, once you had viewed the article via the link, it didn’t show you the advert again, so you couldn’t easily verify the route taken to reach it.

This is clearly at the more worrisome end of the spectrum and I can’t see anything ahead but trouble for operators who are seen to be financially supporting this kind of activity, either knowingly or otherwise. It is clearly immoral, deceptive and exactly what the UKGC is looking to eradicate. Everyone knows gambling can change your life and sometimes even for the better but conveying the message via marketing materials is something that a brand that values both its reputation and its licence should take very, very seriously.

Author: Ian Sims, founder Rightlander

Ian Sims is the founder of Rightlander, a state-of-the-art affiliate compliance platform that allows affiliates and operators to identify potentially non-compliant content in regulated jurisdictions. Prior to establishing Rightlander, Sims was an egaming affiliate for 13 years.