Study finds Dutch gambling ads breach age rules on Meta
- A peer-reviewed study examined 277 gambling adverts on Meta’s Facebook and Instagram platforms by licensed Dutch operators between 2024 and early 2025.
- 11.2% of adverts targeted users aged 18 to 23, a group explicitly protected under Dutch law, with offline licence holders showing a non-compliance rate of nearly 30%.
- Researchers recommend Meta adopt country-specific age defaults and provide single-year audience reach data to support accurate compliance verification.
A new academic study has found that a significant minority of gambling advertisements placed on Meta’s platforms by licensed Dutch operators breached the country’s age-targeting rules, exposing protected young adults to gambling marketing despite tightening restrictions.
The research, conducted jointly by academics from City University of Hong Kong and the University of Bristol, analysed 277 paid adverts by licensed Dutch gambling operators on Facebook and Instagram between 2024 and early 2025.
It used the EU Digital Services Act (DSA)-mandated Ad Library, which requires platforms to disclose the age ranges targeted by advertisers and the estimated reach across broad demographic brackets.
Compliance gap revealed
The study identified 31 of the 277 adverts — 11.2% — as having targeted age groups that included users aged 18 to 23, a cohort specifically protected under Dutch gambling advertising law.
The divide between online and offline operators was stark. Online gambling licence holders demonstrated a compliance rate of 92.7%, whereas offline licence holders were far less compliant, with nearly 30% of their adverts breaching age restrictions.
Holland Casino, the state-owned operator with a monopoly over physical casino table games, was among those implicated. One Holland Casino advert reached more than 21,000 Dutch users aged 18 to 24, with researchers estimating that over 15% of its total Dutch reach fell within the prohibited age group.
Holland Casino subsequently acknowledged the error and attributed it to its use of Meta’s Advantage+ automated ad optimisation tool, which defaults the minimum target age to 18 rather than the 24 required under Dutch law. VBET made the same admission.
The study also found that ads eventually reached young male users in disproportionate numbers, with 65,737 male users aged 18 to 24 exposed to online gambling ads, equating to 87.2% of under-24 reach, even when gender had not been specifically targeted.
Researchers suggested a potential algorithmic bias in Meta’s ad delivery system may explain this pattern.
Platform data limits oversight
Meta’s reporting system presents a structural obstacle: because age ranges are disclosed in broad brackets such as 18-24, advertisers cannot easily verify compliance with a rule that specifically excludes the 18-23 cohort. This aggregation complicates both internal compliance checks and external monitoring.
Researchers also cited human error in pre-publication compliance procedures as a contributing factor across some operators.
The study makes a series of practical recommendations. It calls on Meta to provide reach data in single-year age increments, and to apply country-specific legal age minimums by default, automatically preventing Dutch gambling adverts from targeting users under 24.
More radically, it proposes that regulators consider a pre-authorisation system requiring manual vetting of gambling advertisements before publication.
On the regulatory side, the researchers urge the Dutch gambling authority, the Kansspelautoriteit (KSA), to publicly confirm that offline licence holders are subject to the same digital advertising restrictions as online operators.
As of January 2026, the KSA had stated it could not yet provide substantive feedback on the question but had identified it as a priority for its supervisory agenda.
Wider pressure on Meta
The findings arrive amid escalating industry criticism of Meta’s handling of gambling advertising across multiple markets.
Earlier this year, Tim Miller, executive director of the UK Gambling Commission, has publicly attacked the platform over illegal gambling adverts appearing to GB users, including campaigns targeting individuals who had self-excluded through the GamStop scheme.
In the Netherlands itself, licensed operators’ trade body VNLOK has separately warned that over 95% of gambling promotions it identified on Meta’s platforms between October and December 2025 originated from unlicensed operators, a problem distinct from but compounding the compliance issues raised in the new study.
The study’s authors note that, in contrast to loot box disclosure contexts where non-compliance rates exceed 90%, the relatively contained level of Dutch gambling advertising breaches suggests that licensing-based enforcement has the potential to succeed. Stricter action from the KSA is nonetheless needed to close the remaining gap.
With the first round of Dutch online gambling licences due to expire in September 2026 and a comprehensive overhaul of the Remote Gambling Act expected, operators advertising on social media face considerably greater scrutiny.
Those relying on automated tools such as Advantage+ without manual compliance checks may find those practices increasingly difficult to defend as the KSA tightens enforcement expectations ahead of the renewal round.
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About the author
Maria Steriopol
Maria is a Certified Clinical & Family Systemic Psychologist with extensive experience in understanding human behaviour. With four years in the iGaming industry, she specializes in treating addictions, including gambling addiction, and applies her expertise to promote responsible gaming. At iGaming Republic, Maria advises on editorial strategy to ensure content upholds the highest standards of player protection.
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