Gambling adverts on social media reach 2.3 times more men than women: Using the Meta Ad library to assess gambling advertising in Ireland

Petrovskaya, Elena and Xiao, Leon Y. and Khoo, Nicole and Leahy, Deirdre and Roberts, Amanda (2026) Gambling adverts on social media reach 2.3 times more men than women: Using the Meta Ad library to assess gambling advertising in Ireland. JOURNAL OF BEHAVIORAL ADDICTIONS, 15 (2). pp. 824-832. ISSN 2062-5871

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Abstract

Background and aims Gambling is a public health issue, leading to many harms. Gambling advertising is prevalent and constant, including on social media, which allows for personalised targeting and wide reach. Our aim was to understand the reach and target demographics such advertising. Methods The EU Digital Services Act now requires large online platforms to provide repositories for all advertising shown and associated audience demographic data for EU countries. We used Ireland as a case study to assess the scale of targeting specific genders and age groups by gambling companies, as well as the actual reach of the adverts. We checked through the publicly available list of remote betting licensees operating in Ireland (n = 88). Adverts were examined as to their intended target demographics and actual impressions by various demographic groups. Results Between January and February 2025, we studied 411 adverts across 88 operators. Ninety-one adverts (22%) targeted men only; no adverts (0%) targeted only women. 12,690,245 men were reached across all the 411 adverts, 2.3 times more compared to 5,458,438 women. The age group of 25–34 reached the most unique accounts, with a total of 6,246,408 accounts reached (33.9% of all accounts reached). Discussion and Conclusions These findings illustrate male-skewed delivery in gambling advertising in Ireland, and demonstrate the utility of platform ad repositories for addiction research.

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