Gambling Ads on Meta Platforms Reach Young Men at More Than Double the Rate of Women, Cambridge Study Finds

A new study led by researchers at the University of Cambridge has found that gambling advertisements on Meta’s social media platforms reach young men at more than double the rate of women, even when ads are not explicitly targeted by gender. The analysis of 411 ads from 88 licensed gambling operators in Ireland raises questions about the effectiveness of self-regulated ad placement, as countries move to implement stricter rules for gambling promotion on social platforms.

Licensed Gambling Operators and Ad Reach

The study focuses on 88 licensed gambling operators in Ireland, which ran 411 ads across Facebook and Instagram over a period covered by the Meta Ad Library. These companies’ core business problem is acquiring new customers and driving repeated engagement with betting products, a challenge they address by leveraging the precise targeting tools offered by platforms like Meta. While only 91 ads (22%) directly targeted men, and no ads targeted women exclusively, the overall reach was heavily skewed: 12.6 million men saw the ads compared to 5.4 million women, a ratio of 2.3 to 1.

Traction data from the study shows the 25 to 34 age group, which has the highest rate of problem gambling in Ireland, accounted for over a third of all unique accounts reached, with 6.2 million total impressions. A single ad from Betfair reached 1.32 million unique accounts, equivalent to 26% of Ireland’s entire population. Ads targeting any part of the 25-44 age bracket reached 59.4% of all accounts exposed to gambling promotions.

“Not that many adverts directly targeted men to begin with,” said lead author Dr Elena Petrovskaya from Cambridge’s Department of Computer Science and Technology. “But even when adverts were set to reach all genders, they still reached that very vulnerable group of young men. It shows that if companies just put ads on social media, they are still reaching young men. This is the group we know from other research is most at risk of gambling harms.”

Public Health Context and Regulatory Response

Problem gambling rates in Ireland’s 25-34 age group are 1.3% for men, six times higher than the 0.2% rate for women in the same cohort. Previous research links ad exposure to more positive attitudes toward gambling, increased participation, and a dose-response effect where more ad exposure correlates with higher risk of harm. The Cambridge study used data from the Meta Ad Library, a transparency tool required by the EU Digital Services Act that mandates online platforms publish all ads run in EU countries alongside demographic reach data.

Ireland implemented the Gambling Regulation Act 2024 in March 2025, establishing the Gambling Regulatory Authority of Ireland and introducing rules that will eventually restrict social media gambling ads to users who actively follow a licensed operator. Most unsolicited gambling ads on social platforms will be banned once the advertising provisions of the act take effect. The study establishes a baseline for measuring the impact of these reforms, according to co-author Dr Deirdre Leahy from MTU in Cork: “This research provides valuable insights that establish a baseline for the reach of gambling advertising on social media in Ireland before the introduction of a regulatory framework. This baseline will be essential for assessing the impact of reforms under the Gambling Regulation Act.”

Broader Industry Trends

Gambling advertising remains lightly regulated in the UK and most other European countries, and has seen rapid growth in the US driven by prediction markets including Polymarket and Kalshi. These platforms allow users to bet on real-world events, from political outcomes to sports results, and have contributed to a surge in gambling ad spend on social media. The Cambridge team notes their methodology using the Meta Ad Library could be applied to other regions with weak regulation, and call for wider adoption of EU-style transparency rules for harmful industries.

The study is published in the Journal of Behavioral Addictions, with reference: Elena Petrovskaya et al. ‘Gambling adverts on social media reach 2.3 times more men than women: using the Meta Ad Library to assess gambling advertising in Ireland.’ Journal of Behavioral Addictions (2026). DOI: 10.1556/2006.2025.00484