Clearly (not) identifiable – The recognisability of gambling content marketing

Social media marketing is evolving rapidly, with content marketing emerging as a prominent technique. It blurs the lines between content and advertising and aims to foster enduring positive relationships between brand and consumer. For gambling products, approximately 40-50% of social media ads are content marketing. International advertising codes stipulate that advertising must be obviously identifiably as such. To date, however, no one has investigated whether content marketing is identifiable – particularly to children and young adults who are vulnerable to gambling harms. Our online experiment with over 650 participants aged 11-78 investigate whether consumers of all or any age are, indeed, able to recognise content marketing as advertising. The results are striking. Firstly, children and young persons show significantly lower recognition rates for social media ads, compared to adults. Secondly, irrespective of age, content marketing is universally challenging to identify compared to conventional ads. This holds true for both gambling and insurance ads. Levels for gambling content marketing hover around chance levels for children and young persons, while only slightly above for adults. These findings underscore the deficiencies in current advertising regulations. The authors recommend a ban on gambling content marketing. They also recommend the expansions of advertising literacy education in schools and the integration of (gambling) advertising literacy skills into third sector gambling education programmes. These measures would enhance consumer protection in the ever-evolving landscape of social media marketing.