In mid-2025, Google made up to 18 updates to its gambling advertising policy, averaging 1.5 times per month. The most iconic moment occurred on October 28, 2025: Google officially separated "Sweepstakes Casino" from the "Social Casino Games" category and reclassified it as real money gambling. The business model that previously relied on a "dual currency system" (gold coins + sweepstakes coins) was also uniformly included in Google's licensed regulatory framework.
For gambling operators highly dependent on Google's traffic system, the industry will face a real structural reshuffle.
🪧 Three major policy restructurings: Google's gambling ads have been completely changed
🟢 Expansion of gambling definition: Redeemable virtual assets fully included under gambling regulation
The 2025 policy updates redefine "gambling" by Google to include any virtual assets with redeemable value as gambling activities.
This redefinition includes cryptocurrency gambling, valuable NFT lotteries, and even game skins. Over the past few years, many Web3 projects have been advertised under the guise of "digital collections," "virtual assets," and "on-chain rewards." Now, the signals released by Google for Web3 gambling are clear, and the gray areas are shrinking.
🟢 Tightening of geographical restrictions: Banning ads in 35 countries, significantly increasing global layout complexity
On November 19, 2025, Google expanded the list of countries where gambling ads are banned from 21 to 35.
Newly added banned countries include: ➡️ Bulgaria, Estonia, Italy, Lithuania, Northern Ireland, Philippines, Turkey, Ukraine, etc. Notably, the Philippines and Turkey were previously key breakthrough points for long-term gambling ads, but now they are also directly blocked at the advertising level.
Even in countries where ads are allowed, regulatory differences are becoming more apparent:
USA: Huge state-level differences. Missouri allows sports betting ads, but Texas and New Mexico restrict lottery courier; horse racing aggregator ads are completely banned from December.
Australia: Temporarily stops accepting new gambling ad certification applications.
Brazil: Only allows online casino ads with a Ministry of Finance permit and using the ".bet.br" domain.
UAE: Only lottery ads are allowed, and must be authorized by GCGRA.
🟢 Certification mechanism: Corporate certification changes to "single website + single country" mode
Starting from April 2025, Google abolished the general corporate certification and changed it to a "single website + single country" independent certification mode. Assuming a company has 3 websites and plans to enter 5 country markets, under the current policy, the company needs to submit 15 independent certification applications, each with a review period of 4–6 weeks.
🪧 Response plan: Build compliance barriers or restructure traffic
Starting January 28, 2026, Google Play will mandatorily require all apps with real money gambling features to enable age control mechanisms, including mandatory age screening prompts, parental control features, and geofencing access restrictions.
In the new regulatory cycle, the choices for gambling companies going overseas are narrowing, generally leaving only two paths.
🔝 Full compliance, building long-term competitive barriers
For companies with financial strength and scale, systematic compliance is a more robust direction. This includes applying for regular gambling licenses, completing independent certifications for different countries and websites, establishing professional compliance teams, and reserving a 6–12 month review period.
In the short term, the cost and time investment increase significantly, but in the long term, this investment will transform into market entry barriers. When many small and medium players exit due to inability to bear the costs, compliant companies may have the opportunity to increase market share and achieve structural concentration.
🔝 Diversifying channels, reducing platform dependence
For companies that cannot bear high compliance costs, it is necessary to accelerate the transformation of traffic structure, including: obtaining alternative traffic through social platforms such as Meta, TikTok, X; increasing content marketing investment, building their own content matrix; using tools like Telegram, Discord to retain private domain users; trying vertical advertising networks, ad alliances, to improve the efficiency of reaching high-value users.
Moving from a growth model "highly dependent on a single platform" to "multi-channel asset-based operation" structural upgrade.
Different paths, but the same direction, adapting to the rules to reshape their own structure, is the only way to stabilize their position in a tightening policy environment and win the next stage of development space.
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