As the State of Florida and the Seminole Tribe are trying to juke it out, Google has decided to act preemptively and effectively banned all gambling advertisements that may appear through Google Ads in the state.
The decision by the search engine comes a day after a federal judge in Washington DC overturned the Florida-Seminole Tribal Gaming Compact, ruling that the manner in which the Seminole Tribe had been offering remote sports betting was in breach of state laws.
The fallout for legal sports betting in the state is still unclear, but Google is already on the offensive as it has a stated mission to protect consumers from predatory ads and generally promotes safe and responsible gambling messages.
Therefore, the company has seen fit to suspend any advertisement while the federal judge’s ruling is in effect. This means that any existing or planned gambling commercial about online casinos, sports, or other gaming verticals would now need to abide by the new rules and be withdrawn with immediate effect.
This includes gambling ads that are pushed through Gmail, shopping ads, or customer rating annotations. Should Google find any offending ads, it will act swiftly and suspend it as well as possibly issue penalties to the originators of the ad.
Google will suspend Google Ads accounts in cases where individuals are not complying with the search engine’s guidelines. Another method of dealing with those ads is to issue a temporary “disapproval,” which means that the ad will not be allowed to run until policy violations have been amended.
Google has been one of the most proactive internet giants to take active measures and restrict the fallout of gambling on consumers. In December 2020, Google introduced tools to block and limit consumer exposure to ads pertaining to alcohol and gambling products. Earlier this month, the company challenged a claim in the Italian court that it had purposefully allowed a gambling ad to appear and won.
