Google’s rules and requirements around gambling advertising will become stricter later this year, amid widespread political and public concern about the extent of industry marketing.

The Google Ads team from Google Ireland Ltd, the American multinational tech giant’s European branch, confirmed that advertising policies will tighten up from 23 March 2026 onwards. The Dublin-based division of Google is responsible for running Google Ads across Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA).

Eligibility requirements are the main focus for Google, with prospective gambling advertisers required to ‘demonstrate good health policy’ from March onwards if they want to secure a gambling certification.

The change in policy is essentially factoring in an advertiser’s history, as well as its current actions and future intentions. Advertisers’ past and current compliance with Google gambling ad policies will be factored in much more.

The policy will be that advertisers ‘that face repeated gambling certification revocations or violations’ could either see their certificate application rejected or have an existing certificate revoked.

As well as an advertiser’s compliance, Google is also tightening its policies around how an advertiser hosts and structures their operation.

Sites can no longer be hosted on free platforms, cannot be the subdomain of a third-party platform, and must have an association with the licensed industry. Advertisers will also not be able to own and operate second-level domains.

The reasons for Google’s change in policy have not been stated by the company, but it may be no coincidence that the changes come at a time of heightened pressure and concern around gambling advertising across many European jurisdictions.

Gambling advertising across the EU is varied, with the 27 member states all having different standards around how the industry can promote itself. This is also not including other European nations that are not EU members, like the UK, Switzerland and Norway.

These varying regulations have occasionally led to Google finding itself in a bit of a bind, such as in Italy, where gambling advertising has been illegal since 2018. Google’s platforms have come up against regulatory headwinds in Italy due to violations of this rule.

In other markets, concerns around illegal gambling and the way illicit platforms advertise themselves have been rising over the past year. Perhaps the best example of this is the advertising of ‘non-Gamstop casinos’ in the UK, with the UK Gambling Commission calling on Meta to better address these practices at the ICE trade show this week.

Google is clearly tightening the screws around advertising to filter out the most non-complaint actors from its platform. In doing so, it will reduce the risk of facing regulatory challenges and enforcements, complete with potential fines and bad PR, across European markets.