eGaming Review - Gambling ads still circumventing Google ban

Gambling ads still circumventing Google ban Over-eager affiliates have been blamed for controversial paid placements that have run on Google recently for Party Poker and Betfair. Searches on Google for “online poker, internet poker and poker” yielded paid placement adverts for both Party Poker and referring site www.playatparty.com. Similarly a search for online betting on Thursday morning generated an advert for www.bettfair.com, although the offending advert was removed by the afternoon. The deliberately misspelled site, www.bettfair.com, is registered to Betfair’s owners The Sporting Exchange. The placements are in strict contravention of the ban on online gambling adverts put into place by Google during 2004. But it is believed some affiliates have discovered a way of getting around the ban using Google’s automated system. A Party Poker spokesman said the adverts were not placed by his firm, and it was not a strategy they would ever employ. Party Poker, the market-leading poker site, has around 60% of the poker market and operates a huge affiliate network. And it is thought increasing competition betweenaffiliates is leading to more inventive marketing techniques being adopted. The firm’s spokesman described the current affiliate environment as “brutal”. Paid-for placement adverts could also be found at the time of writing for sportsbook Sports Interaction.