Liam Walsh
Liam is a Co-Director at Intelligency and heads up the agency's Digital Intelligence & Paid Social activity. Over the last decade, he has worked with brands from the world of sports such as Premier League clubs to entertainment such as Channel 4 and Disney.
New research from the University of Cambridge has revealed something that should concern anyone involved in digital advertising, not just gambling brands. Social media platforms are delivering gambling ads to young men at more than double the rate of women, even when those ads were not specifically set up to target men. It is a finding that raises serious questions about how algorithmic ad delivery works, and what responsibility brands and platforms carry for the audiences their campaigns ultimately reach.
What the research found
The Cambridge-led study analysed over 400 advertisements from 88 licensed gambling operators running campaigns in Ireland, using data made available through Meta’s Ad Library under EU transparency rules. The results were stark. Across Facebook and Instagram, men were reached 2.3 times more than women. The most exposed age group was 25 to 34-year-olds, who accounted for over a third of all accounts reached. One single ad from Betfair alone reached more than 1.3 million unique accounts, equivalent to roughly a quarter of Ireland’s entire population. Crucially, the skew towards men was not simply the result of advertisers choosing to target them. Even ads set to reach all genders defaulted towards young men, suggesting the platforms’ own delivery systems were driving the imbalance.
Why this matters beyond gambling
The significance here goes beyond one industry. This research demonstrates that social media ad delivery does not simply reflect the audience you set up in your campaign. The algorithm makes its own decisions about who sees your content, and those decisions are not always visible or predictable. For any brand advertising on Meta, it is a reminder that the audience you target and the audience you actually reach can be very different things. Understanding that gap matters, both for campaign performance and for the growing regulatory scrutiny around responsible advertising.
What advertisers should take from this
Regulators are paying attention. Ireland has already introduced restrictions requiring users to actively opt in before seeing gambling ads on social media. The UK and other markets are likely to follow. But the broader lesson for advertisers is this: knowing who your ads reach is not optional. Demographic delivery data is available within Meta’s reporting tools, and reviewing it regularly should be standard practice. If your campaigns are reaching audiences you did not intend, or missing audiences you did, that is both a compliance risk and a wasted budget. The algorithm works for you when you understand it, and against you when you do not.
