Google today told AdSense publishers that it will expand online gambling and social casino advertising on Authorized Buyers to a wider set of countries from August 10, 2026, and that buyers will no longer need to certify end advertisers with the company to promote this content in those markets.

The notice arrived through a mandatory service email from the Google AdSense team, dated today, addressed to publishers who monetise inventory through the company's programmatic pipes. According to the email, once the update takes effect, Authorized Buyers will be able to promote online gambling and social casino gaming across an expanded list of geographies, and the certification step that currently gates end advertisers in the programmatic channel will be removed for that content.

The full policy language is scheduled for publication on the Authorized Buyers policy page on August 10, 2026, the same date the change becomes effective. Google framed the modification narrowly. According to the email, the update applies specifically to the Authorized Buyers policy and does not alter other policies such as the Google Ads Gambling and games policy. The distinction matters, because the two policy regimes now diverge on one of the most sensitive advertising verticals Google handles.

What the update changes

The core of the change is the removal of a gatekeeping step. On Google Ads, advertisers who want to run online gambling ads must be certified by Google before their campaigns can serve. That requirement remains in place for the Google Ads platform. On Authorized Buyers, the programmatic marketplace through which demand-side platforms and ad networks bid on publisher inventory, the update lifts the equivalent certification obligation for end advertisers in the expanded country set.

According to the email, the creatives covered by the change include online casinos and sport books, bingo and slot machine sites or apps, online lottery ticket and scratch card purchases, online sports betting, and games using virtual currencies with real-world value. These categories mirror the definitions Google already applies to online gambling across its advertising documentation, where the term captures the staking of something of value on an outcome determined by chance with the opportunity to win something of value.

The email states that gambling creatives will be able to serve beyond select United States states only. That phrasing describes the prior baseline: within Authorized Buyers, the United States has been the jurisdiction where online gambling ads could run through Open Auction and Private Auction, subject to certification. The expansion opens serving in a further list of national markets.

The expanded country list

Google named the additional geographies in the email. The list covers Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Taiwan, Czechia, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, Ireland, Israel, Japan, Korea, Latvia, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Peru, the Philippines, Portugal, Romania, the Russian Federation, Serbia, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, and the United Kingdom. Counting distinct territories, the notice identifies 37 markets, with the caveat that the update ties serving to compliance with local laws, regulations, and industry standards in each.

The published Authorized Buyers Gambling and games policy already contains a country table that governs how gambling creatives may serve across auction types. According to that documentation, creatives promoting online and offline gambling content targeting countries not listed will be disapproved, with an exception where a creative is served through Deals - Preferred Deals and Programmatic Guaranteed - and a publisher has enabled a block override. The table distinguishes Open Auction, Private Auction, Preferred Deals, and Programmatic Guaranteed columns for the listed countries, while the United States entry is marked as subject to certification.

The mechanics behind that table explain why the certification change carries weight. According to the Authorized Buyers policy, the United States is currently the only country where online gambling ads are permitted on Open Auction and Private Auction, and enabling Open Auction serving there requires obtaining a Google certification for the advertiser's domain. In many other approved countries, the documentation states that buyers can run online gambling ads without certification, but campaigns must execute through Preferred Deals or Programmatic Guaranteed deals rather than Open Auction. Running ads through Deals is available for all listed countries and excludes the United States, and no special application is required for those countries.

Social casino gaming and its separate rules

The update also reaches social casino gaming, a category Google treats as distinct from real-money gambling. According to the Authorized Buyers policy, social casino games are online simulated gambling-style games where there is no opportunity to win something of value. The documentation permits advertising of social casino games only in countries where the requirements are met and the advertiser holds an Authorized Buyers certification for that category.

Those requirements are specific. According to the policy, games must include a disclaimer that they are only intended for users over legal gambling age and must not target minors. The advertiser must hold a valid local license for distribution of their games in the targeted country where applicable. Games must include statements that they are not offering or promoting real-money gambling and are not providing prizes of real-world value. Any in-app purchases must be disclosed on the landing page or in the ad. Ads, sites, and apps must not use logos, names, or marks associated with real-money gambling brands.

The social casino category carries its own country restrictions and its own technical requirement. According to the documentation, the buyer must include APPROVED-APP or APPROVED-APP-ID in the declared click-through URL, and if that identifier is absent, the ad will be disapproved. The policy lists example declared URL formats for both Google Play and the Apple App Store.

Enforcement and the compliance baseline

Google's stance on gambling policy violations remains severe across its documentation, and the Authorized Buyers change does not soften it. According to the Google Ads Gambling and games policy, serving gambling ads without a valid certification may result in an account being prohibited from running ads until certification is obtained. For social casino games specifically, the Google Ads documentation states that violations are treated as egregious, that accounts will be suspended upon detection and without prior warning, and that the advertiser will not be allowed to advertise again.

The underlying eligibility conditions that govern gambling advertising also persist. According to Google's policy documentation, gambling ads must target approved countries, provide a landing page that displays information about responsible gambling, and never target minors. The Authorized Buyers policy repeats those three conditions and directs advertisers to check local regulations for the areas they intend to target.

The removal of end-advertiser certification on Authorized Buyers therefore operates against a backdrop of unchanged content rules. What shifts is the verification layer at the point of entry into the programmatic channel, not the substantive standards a creative must meet once it serves. Google's approach on the Authorized Buyers side moves the compliance burden toward local law and industry standards rather than a company-administered certificate for each end advertiser.

What publishers can control

The email's closing addresses the operational consequence for the publishers who received it. According to the notice, publishers may notice an increase in online gambling ads appearing on their sites in certain geographies as a result of the change. Google pointed those publishers to the AdSense controls that determine which ads may appear on their inventory.

Those controls are documented in the AdSense guide to allow and block ads. According to that guide, AdSense offers several options for reviewing and blocking ads, and publishers can block ads from general categories such as Apparel, Internet, Real Estate, and Vehicles, or from sensitive category groupings. The guide notes that sensitive category blocking and general category blocking are available for ads in a limited set of languages, regardless of the language of the site. It also describes site-level blocking, which lets publishers who manage multiple sites apply different blocking strategies to each, customising advertiser URL, general category, and sensitive category options on a site-by-site basis.

The guide frames blocking as a trade-off. According to the documentation, blocking ads can have a negative effect on earnings, and the recommendation is to start with the control that blocks the fewest ads first. It adds that allowing all ads creates the most competitive atmosphere in the ad auction, with the largest number of ads competing for an impression. The same guide describes an Authorized Buyers page within AdSense that gives publishers insight into the buyers bidding on their inventory and lets them allow or block particular buyers through bidding controls.

Context on Google's programmatic and gambling trajectory

The certification removal fits a pattern in which Google has been decoupling its programmatic Authorized Buyers policies from the stricter certification regime that governs Google Ads. In December 2025, Google gave programmatic buyers new freedom on prescription drug ads, allowing Authorized Buyers to promote prescription drugs and prescription drug services in specific locations without Google certification, a departure from the certification requirements that govern pharmaceutical advertising on Google Ads. The gambling update applies the same structural logic to a different vertical: identical content, two divergent verification frameworks depending on the channel.

That divergence sits inside a broader reshaping of how Google manages the entities bidding on publisher inventory. In October 2025, Google replaced its ad networks blocking control in AdSense with an Authorized Buyers system, a change that took effect on November 6, 2025 and eliminated three categories from the previous system while defaulting new authorized buyers to allowed. The reconfiguration of blocking controls is the same surface publishers now need to use if they want to limit the gambling demand the new policy will route through their sites.

Google's gambling policy has moved in several directions at once over the past year, and not all of them expand permissions. In November 2025, Google expanded offline gambling ad restrictions across 35 countries, adding jurisdictions to the list where brick-and-mortar casino and gaming establishment advertisements cannot run. On the enforcement side, Google's gambling ad crackdown targeted repeat violators and Manager Accounts through a policy effective March 23, 2026 that requires accounts seeking gambling certification to demonstrate good policy health and extends enforcement to the Manager Accounts overseeing certified advertisers.

The company has also been layering new gambling-adjacent categories onto its platforms. In January 2026, Google opened prediction market advertising to CFTC-regulated platforms, a policy that took effect on January 21, 2026 and required both federal regulatory authorization and Google certification. That program has since narrowed in places: in June 2026, Google banned prediction market ads in Ohio as state-level gambling disputes intensified. On premium inventory, Google expanded sports betting ads to the United Kingdom and Brazil on TV Masthead effective November 13, 2025, having earlier permitted the format for sports betting in the United States.

For the marketing community, the significance of today's change lies in where the gambling supply lands and who decides whether it appears. The Google Ads certification wall stays up for advertisers buying directly through that platform. On the programmatic side, the removal of end-advertiser certification widens the pool of gambling demand that can reach AdSense, Ad Manager, and AdMob inventory through Authorized Buyers in 37 additional markets, and it transfers the practical decision about exposure to the publisher's blocking configuration. Publishers who have not set category or buyer-level controls will encounter the fuller flow of gambling creatives that the policy permits from August 10, 2026, in the geographies where local law allows it.

Timeline

Summary

Who: Google, through its AdSense and Authorized Buyers systems, notifying publishers who monetise inventory programmatically and affecting demand-side platforms and ad networks that bid on that inventory.

What: An update to the Authorized Buyers Gambling and games policy that expands where online gambling and social casino creatives may serve and removes the requirement for buyers to certify end advertisers with Google in the affected markets. The change does not alter the separate Google Ads Gambling and games policy, which retains its certification requirement.

When: Announced by email today, July 20, 2026, with the policy scheduled to take effect and be published on August 10, 2026.

Where: An expanded list of 37 national markets named in the notice, including Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, Mexico, South Africa, Spain, and the United Kingdom, with serving tied to local laws and industry standards in each.

Why: The change extends a pattern in which Google decouples its programmatic Authorized Buyers policies from the stricter certification framework governing Google Ads, shifting the compliance burden toward local regulation and publisher-side blocking controls while widening the gambling demand that can reach AdSense, Ad Manager, and AdMob inventory.