Young men in Ireland saw gambling advertisements on Meta platforms 2.3 times more often than women during early 2025. The disparity held even when operators set campaigns to reach all genders. Algorithms, it turns out, did the heavy lifting.
Researchers from the University of Cambridge examined 411 ads placed by 88 licensed operators. They pulled the data straight from the Meta Ad Library, made public under the EU Digital Services Act. The numbers paint a stark picture. Those ads reached 12.69 million male accounts. They reached 5.46 million female accounts. One Betfair advertisement alone hit 1.32 million unique accounts. That equals 26 percent of Ireland’s entire population.
The 25-to-34 age bracket absorbed the biggest share. Over one-third of all unique accounts reached fell into this group. More than 6.2 million impressions landed here. Men in this cohort face the highest rates of problem gambling in Ireland. Some 1.3 percent show high-risk behavior. For women the same age the figure sits at 0.2 percent.
“Not that many adverts directly targeted men to begin with,” said lead author Dr. Elena Petrovskaya of 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 – the group we know from other research is most at risk of gambling harms.”
Only 22 percent of the ads explicitly targeted men. None targeted women alone. Three-quarters aimed at “all” genders. Yet the delivery system skewed male. Sports-themed promotions, heavy on football, likely fed the algorithms that favor content young men already engage with. The result? A feedback loop that funnels betting messages toward the demographic already primed for harm.
Previous studies link ad exposure to more positive views on gambling. Intentions rise. So does actual participation. A dose-response pattern appears in the data. More ads, more gambling, greater chance of damage. The Cambridge team published its findings in the Journal of Behavioral Addictions.
Dr. Deirdre Leahy from Munster Technological University in Cork co-authored the work. “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,” she said. “This baseline will be essential for assessing the impact of reforms under the Gambling Regulation Act.”
Ireland activated that act in March 2025. It created the Gambling Regulatory Authority of Ireland. Social media ads now require users to opt in by following a licensed operator. Broadcast ads face a watershed. Yet enforcement questions linger. Observers wonder whether the authority has enough resources to police the online space where young men scroll for hours.
The Irish Examiner reported ongoing ads even after the study period. Paddy Power pushed a Champions League promotion aimed squarely at men aged 25 to 34. Boylesports offered free bets seen nearly eight times more by men in that bracket. William Hill promoted Punchestown Festival deals. The patterns persist.
Algorithms bear much of the blame. Deepak Padmanabhan of Queen’s University Belfast told the Examiner that content-based filtering drives engagement and profit. “In this hi-tech environment, the system sets up the game, and users merely play by it,” he said. “We might rightly see young males getting heavily exposed to addictive gambling ads as a problem, but the deeper issue lies with the platforms themselves.”
Colin O’Gara, a consultant psychiatrist at St John of God Hospital and University College Dublin, called the situation a real problem with normalization among young men. Advertising acts as a key engine of harm. He questioned whether the new authority stands ready. Frank Houghton of Technological University of the Shannon urged swift rollout of the act’s advertising controls.
Paul Kitchin of Ulster University noted the ease with which mobile phones and social feeds connect at-risk young men to operators promising quick money. The study sets a clear marker for what came before tighter rules.
Similar pressures mount elsewhere. In April 2026 Australia announced curbs on gambling ads featuring celebrities and restricted online promotions to logged-in users over 18, effective 2027. The measures fall short of a full online ban that its own 2023 inquiry had recommended. Public health costs from gambling there run to A$34 billion a year, the highest per capita worldwide. (Reuters).
The UK continues to wrestle with widespread gambling marketing on social platforms and in sports. An All-Party Parliamentary Group has labeled it a public health concern that normalizes betting for younger audiences. Ireland’s pre-regulation snapshot offers a rare transparent look thanks to the EU transparency mandate.
Petrovskaya described the scale as dizzying, especially in a small country. The team argues that the Meta Ad Library method can extend to other lightly regulated markets such as the UK and Australia. Greater adoption of Digital Services Act-style rules would bring accountability to industries that profit from addictive products.
Limitations exist. The sample covers only a fraction of total ads run during the period. Manual collection introduced some variability, though researchers cross-checked. Meta’s own reach calculations can differ from actual unique users, and people maintain multiple accounts. Still, the gender and age skew stands out clearly.
But the core message holds. Platforms don’t need explicit male targeting to deliver the bulk of gambling messages to young men. The machinery does it automatically. As regulators in Ireland begin to measure the post-act environment, this Cambridge baseline will test whether opt-in rules and oversight can break the pattern.
Young men remain the prime audience. The ads keep coming. The question now is whether policy can catch up before more harms accumulate.
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