White Hat Media News
30/10/2008 | Google takes a gamble
Google have changed their stance on allowing gambling advertisements on their search engine. This new move has caused very mixed reaction from leading figures in Britain.
Google, who are one of the biggest search engines, have justified the decision by commenting on the fact that it will be in accordance with local business practices and that companies will have to be registered with the British Gambling Commission to advertise. All adverts will also be classified as Non-Family Safe meaning they won't come up on a search where the Safe Search filter is active.
This hasn't stopped senior government figures and church leaders condemning the decision for its irresponsibility. A Church of England spokesman was quoted as saying that, "whatever people are searching for on the internet it isn't the chance to develop a serious gambling problem."
According to sources at Google, the search engine giant, they have been reviewing their worldwide ban on online advertising for some time now and hope that the lifting of the ban will help enhance the search engine experience for users. With online gambling legal in the UK, unlike the US, it is a fast growing industry that naturally the big companies will not want to miss out on.
Google is said to control around 70% of the online advertising marketing worldwide and that some of the major gambling companies have been leaning on them to reverse their policies in recent months.
Still, this is proving to be a concern for some politicians who have noted that there has been a recent rise in gambling addictions being dealt with by GamCare and so have questioned the wisdom of the decision.
In light of the UK advertising growth slowing down in the last quarter, industry marketing experts have noted that adverts for UK online gambling would be worth up to £00 million a year to Google. So are Google really bringing their advertising polices in line with local practices or are they finding other sources of generating income in a time when the UK economy is temperamental and some businesses are spending less?
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