Missing the target: Gambling adverts on social media were 28 times as likely to breach restrictions on targeting young adults under UK industry self-regulation than under Dutch law

Background and aims: Restricting gambling advertising from targeting young people based on their age may reduce exposure and harm. In the United Kingdom (UK), voluntary self-regulation of the gambling industry body, the Betting and Gaming Council (BGC), requires its members’ social media adverts to exclude people aged under 25 years from being targeted, whereas the Netherlands legally prohibits gambling adverts from targeting people aged under 24 years. We assessed and compared compliance with these restrictions. Design: Cross-sectional analysis of advert-level data from the Meta Ad Library. Setting: Meta social media platforms (e.g., Instagram) in the UK and the Netherlands. Cases: 20,119 UK adverts published by 61 BGC members’ advertising accounts and 13,410 Dutch adverts published by 26 licensed gambling operators, last shown between 21 July 2025 and 21 May 2026 (inclusive). Measurements: An advert was classified as suspected non-compliant when its advertiser-set minimum targeted age was below 25 in the UK or below 24 in the Netherlands. Findings: In the UK, 31.3% (95% confidence interval [CI]=30.7%–32.0%) of adverts were suspected to have failed to comply with the age-based targeting restriction, compared with 1.1% (95% CI=1.0%–1.3%) in the Netherlands (risk ratio=28.0, 95% CI=23.9–32.9). Only 26.2% of UK advertising accounts was consistently compliant with every advert they published, compared to 65.4% of Dutch accounts. Indeed, all Dutch accounts (100%) complied at least once, whilst 18.0% of UK accounts never complied even once. Conclusions: Gambling adverts on social media were 28 times as likely to breach restrictions on targeting young adults under voluntary UK industry self-regulation than under the Dutch legal prohibition. Legal restrictions backed by substantial financial penalties may therefore be critical to securing compliance with measures designed to protect against gambling harms.