Changes to IGRG Advertising Code

[newcustomeroffer]

As you may have seen in August (link), the British Gaming Council (BGC) announced new additions and rules to their Socially Responsible Advertising Code. As a member of the BGC and as a business that’s fully committed to raising standards within our industry, Paddy Power Betfair (PPB) will be adhering to this code across our marketing; which also includes our Affiliate Partnerships Programmes which you operate as part of.
This new code will come into effect on October 1^st 2020 and include:

• Paid Advertising on Social Media (Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, etc) directly promoting a PPB offer or promotion will need to exclusively target users aged 25 and above

• Influencer content must be pre-approved by your programme manager to ensure compliance with our guidelines and must be clearly marked as an advertisement through use of the term ‘#ad’ or ‘#advertisement’. This term must be displayed prominently at all times

• A commitment to post regular responsible gambling messages on social media pages

• Ads in search engines will need to make it clear that their messages are only intended for players aged 18 or above. This means 18+ must be called out in Ad Copy

• PPB’s negative keyword blacklist must be used in any campaign. This blacklist will be comprised of keywords supplied by PPB and the industry blacklist required to comply with the updated IGRG Code. This blacklist can be found here and may change from time to time, which any new additions must be implemented immediately

• Streaming platforms (Youtube, Twitch, etc) channels and content must be age-gated to 18+

These new measures will coincide with the PPB Partnerships Programme Terms and Conditions (link), and the PPB Affiliate Marketing Guidelines (link)
If you are unsure about any of the above measures, please get in contact with your Account Manager immediately or on the addresses below:

Lots of correspondence filtering through from various bookies around these changes now.

[Pokerface]

Many e-mails and requests coming through for updated KYC docs due to this. Not a problem at all but takes away from our time.

There are those that send friendly professional requests and then there are others. LOL

[Former Member 14]

PPB’s negative keyword blacklist must be used in any campaign. This blacklist will be comprised of keywords supplied by PPB and the industry blacklist required to comply with the updated IGRG Code. This blacklist can be found here and may change from time to time, which any new additions must be implemented immediately.

Let me get this straight... any word(s) and or phrase contained within the PPB blacklist, can not be used in any marketing campaign. Would this also include promoting said igaming venues within an affiliate portal?

Not that I promote to the UK or EU for that matter, but, taking a look at that blacklist, aside from the obvious no-goes, there's quite a few words/phrases which could easily be used, in a non-negative manner. Yet it seems, if one uses such a word(s) and or phrase, then one runs the risk of running foul of the IGRG code.

Keep piling the laws on, cause pretty soon there wont be a UK igaming industry to worry about. Most operators will pull the pin.

[newcustomeroffer]

Let me get this straight... any word(s) and or phrase contained within the PPB blacklist, can not be used in any marketing campaign. Would this also include promoting said igaming venues within an affiliate portal?

Yes, needs a lot of clarification industry-wide. Is it just PPC or does it include words in a social media post, on a review page etc - massive difference to the impact depending on this.

[ocreditor]

They prefer to keep it vague, this way it'll have to be depends on the context..