All things considered, the UK licensed gambling sector seems to have kept on the good side of the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA).

As its name suggests, the ASA is responsible for monitoring marketing and advertising standards compliance, especially across digital platforms.

The authority has now released a glimpse into how well those standards are being followed by both the alcohol and gambling sector, focusing on the period between July and November 2025.

In addition, the snapshot is also a way for the regulator to flex its oversight capabilities which were significantly strengthened over the last 12 months with the roll out of its Active Ad Monitoring system powered by Artificial Intelligence.

Thanks to the improvement, the regulator was able to capture around 13,000 unique paid-for and organic ads across the alcohol and gambling sectors within the period described above, flagging down any potential breaches where a person or people under the age of 25 are featured.

The results were positive overall. A total of 86.7% of alcohol ads were in the green, 10.8% were marked as possible breaches, while 2.5% were definitely a compliance failure.

Even with such a satisfactory result, the gambling sector had an even better performance. 

There was only one confirmed breach, putting the rate of certain failures at 0.4%. A total of 3.4% were potential breaches, while 96.2% were given the all-clear.

The regulator concluded: “Our findings indicate that a small percentage of online alcohol and gambling ads feature a person who is or clearly appears to be under the age of 25, in clear breach of the advertising rules. 

“They also identified some areas of greater risk. In particular, organic ads that share user-generated content on social media have a higher risk of being problematic. Alcohol ads were also more likely to be flagged as high risk than gambling ads.

“We have already secured assurances from advertisers who were identified as running non-

compliant ‘red’ ads. We will share our findings with stakeholders and will continue to monitor these sectors to ensure children and young people are protected from irresponsible ads.”