As a sector, the faultlines, liabilities and anxieties of gambling are worn on its sleeves.
All are visible concerns as regulators fret about consumer harms, politicians rally against advertising, and operators warn of the growing reach of black-market betting websites.
Yet, at present, too many stakeholders are completely unaware of a large and costly leakage that is hiding in plain sight.
As the FIFA World Cup 2026 triggers a surge in betting activity and marketing expenditure, questions are being raised about the quality of the digital marketing ecosystem gambling lives in and its exposure to advertising fraud, more commonly known as ad fraud.
This issue has to be separated from the black market and its current threats to regulated gambling markets. Ad fraud rarely makes headlines or attracts any form of parliamentary scrutiny.
Yet for an industry that spends billions on digital customer acquisition, the distortion of advertising data can have consequences that extend far beyond wasted expenditure.
Hidden commercial liabilities
At an operating level, ad fraud can skew investment decisions, inflate the perceived performance of acquisition channels and in many outcomes raise questions about whether advertising has been delivered in the markets where it was intended to appear.
Ad fraud carries a broad and nuanced impact, as many marketing experts believe ad fraud remains one underreported and misunderstood commercial risk for gambling and its incumbents.
Thomas Balling Rasmussen, founder of Effectiveness Advisory and former Group Marketing Director of Betsson Group, explains online gambling’s unique vulnerabilities to ad fraud toSBC News.
“Online gaming is far from the only industry exposed to ad fraud and non-working media, but the sector is unusually vulnerable because marketing is so central to the P&L, and because so much commercial activity is visible, measurable and optimised online,” Rasmussen said.
“Even a modest percentage of wasted or misattributed acquisition spend becomes commercially material very quickly. If an operator spends €50m a year on digital and an independent audit reveals that 20% is non-working media, that is €10m in misallocated spend.”
The challenge is that ad fraud rarely presents itself as an outright criminal activity. Instead, it often hides within campaign reports that appear healthy on the surface.
Many operators rely on verification dashboards that report low levels of invalid traffic, frequently between one and two percent.
However, independent audits of campaign delivery can reveal a very different picture, with substantial volumes of impressions failing to reach real consumers or appearing in environments that offer little commercial value.
False comfort
Rasmussen believes this creates a dangerous sense of complacency.
“One of the biggest dangers is the false sense of comfort. Many companies believe this issue is under control because their dashboards show low invalid traffic and their verification reports look clean,” he explained.
“But when you audit independently, you often find that existing systems have missed large volumes of non-working media. Operators should not confuse low reported invalid traffic with proof that the media is clean.”
Attribution, affiliates and distorted performance
The risks extend beyond wasted advertising budgets. In an industry where attribution models determine future investment decisions, fraudulent impressions, clicks or traffic can distort performance measurements and redirect spending towards channels that merely appear effective.
The gambling sector’s reliance on affiliates adds another layer of exposure. Fraudulent techniques such as cookie stuffing and attribution hijacking have existed for decades, allowing bad actors to claim commissions for customers they played little or no role in acquiring.
World Cup advertising activity further amplifies these risks. As demand for sports-related digital inventory rises, buyers often move quickly to secure audience reach.
That urgency can create opportunities for low-quality or fraudulent inventory to enter the supply chain disguised as premium advertising placements.
A further concern for regulated operators is geolocation accuracy. Inaccurate or manipulated location signals can result in advertising being served outside intended markets, creating not only inefficiencies but also potential compliance questions in jurisdictions with strict licensing requirements.
Cleaning up, not cutting back
For Rasmussen, the solution is not to reduce digital marketing investment but to demand greater transparency and reliability of the mechanics used in the process.
“This is not an argument against digital advertising,” he said. “Digital remains a critical part of the media mix, particularly around major sporting events. The issue is that the industry has often treated reported delivery as if it were the same as real delivery.”
“The opportunity is to clean up digital spend. If operators can identify where budgets are genuinely reaching real people and where money is being lost to non-working media, that becomes a direct effectiveness gain.”
As the World Cup enters full swing, operators will continue to battle for market share and customer attention.
Yet while black-market operators remain the headline threat dominating industry debate, ad fraud may prove to be one of the tournament’s most costly hidden distortions, quietly eroding marketing effectiveness while remaining largely out of sight.
