The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) upheld a complaint against paid web advertisements for Lottoland for misleading marketing.
The advertisements appeared on Bing and Google, including "Lottoland Irish Lottery - Only £2 Here" and "£209m US Powerball Lotto. £56m Megamillions 6for1. Contact us. Play Here"
The complainant filed a query with the ASA in May 2020 after watching two Google adverts, one of which stated "Lottoland Irish Lottery – only £2 Here" and the other of which read "Charity Combo – only £2 Here." Beneficial charity Lotto and BRC Scratch are half off. Support UK Charities Here," and "Lottoland Lotto x5 – Just £1 – 5 chances to win £1 million" and "CAN Your Lotto Do That? Lottoland Can"
In its evaluation, the advertising regulator determined that, in the absence of any qualification, consumers would take the term "Lotto" to signify a lottery and that the company offered consumers the chance to purchase tickets for and participate in official lottery drawings.
In reaching its conclusion that the advertisements were likely to mislead, the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) noticed the usage of the term "Lotto" in all of the advertising, as well as particular references to "Irish Lottery" and "US Powerball Lotto."
“We considered that in that context and in the absence of any qualification, consumers would interpret the term ‘Lotto’ to mean a lottery and that Lottoland provided an opportunity to purchase tickets for and participate in official lottery draws,” the regulator stated.
“Consumers were likely to associate lotteries with contributing to charitable causes, and we considered that the claim ‘support UK charities here’ was likely to reinforce the impression that the service being offered was a lottery.
“However, we understood that the ads related to a service whereby consumers could bet on the result of lottery draws.”
In response to the initial complaint, Lottoland noted that it had "already promised to make modifications to its advertising to ensure references to betting and wagering."
The operator added: “However, due to problems with third-party ad templates and settings, the ads published did not contain the clarifications which they had agreed voluntarily.”
Due to a default configuration on Bing, all relevant portions of the advertisement were generated accidently by a mixture of random phrases from various web sources, which were then automatically published. This resulted in the exclusion of additional clarifications.
In addition, it was alleged that specific text from their website was used to generate an advertisement. Since then, Bing has confirmed that the setting has been deactivated in the United Kingdom.
Regarding the first Google advertisement, Lottoland believed that revisions to pinned things within their Google account should have enabled the generation of suitable advertisements.
However, it was noted that "rarely" this approach removes them due to word count and space constraints. They have since assured that these are incorporated in a manner that will prevent future difficulties.
In addition, the latter, a product created by the organisation, is an extended text advertisement that omits specific keywords. This is no longer available.
“They considered that, irrespective of those explanations, all ads provided clear indications that the offer being advertised related to a service that was very clearly provided by Lottoland,” the ASA noted.
“They said Lottoland was referenced in all of the ads and that ‘Irish Lotto’ was a known, common shorthand for lottery betting products. They said the ads had not made any reference to the ‘Irish National Lottery’ and therefore were not misleading.
“They said there had been no real risk of confusion or conflation and that customers would not reasonably consider that they were participating in the National Lottery.”
Lottoland has also been advised to ensure that its marketing does not have the potential to mislead by omitting the fact that its product revolves around betting on the outcome of a lottery and that references to betting were clear. The ASA's ruling means that the ad cannot appear in its current form again, and Lottoland has been advised to ensure that its marketing does not have the potential to mislead by omitting the fact that its product revolves around
By fLEXI tEAM