Google Ads BAN Sweepstake Casinos? New Gambling Ads Landscape

What are social casinos in the first place?

Social casinos are gambling-styled games that use virtual currency instead of real money. In essence, it’s a free-to-play experience that simulates online casino games like slots, poker, instant and live-dealer games, etc, yet considered much safer for broad audiences. The in-game currency to play on is earned through gameplay, and can’t be exchanged for real money.

And sweepstake casinos?

In fact, sweepstake casinos utilise the same functionality that easily relates them to social casinos, yet with a distinctive difference — the opportunity to withdraw. Users play on virtual currency, but get the chance to win the opportunity to exchange the earned assets for the real prizes within the sweepstake promotion. This introduces a dual currency mechanic, one for the gaming and the other to withdraw, allowing players to transfer in-game assets into real world rewards.

What is RichAds?
Ad network for telegram ads,
high quality push and popunder ads,
domain redirect, native and display traffic source,
buy push ads at $0.005 (CPC), pop ads at $0.5 (CPM),
domain ads costs start from $1.5 (CPM), native ads — from $0.001 (CPC),
ad network offers large volumes of traffic in more than 200 geos from Tier 3 to Tier 1.

Google Ads ban on sweepstake casinos explained

Basically, unlike most of the iGaming products, the social casinos are not that much restricted from advertising through Google Ads and generally comply with the platform guidelines just fine. For a while that was also the case with sweepstake casinos, which were considered as games despite the indirect money withdrawal opportunities.

That changed with the recent Google’s update on their Games and Gambling policy of 28th of October 2025, stating that sweepstake casinos are NOT social casinos and can’t be certified as ones. Now sweepstake casinos are considered a subject of Gambling and to be certified in order with the platform’s policies towards them. In short, that sufficiently limits advertising such websites and applications, as Google is known for strict rules towards Gambling ads.

What to do after Google Ads’ policy update on sweepstake casinos?

While technically the policy update doesn’t completely forbid advertising sweepstake casinos on Google Ads, such products are now a lot harder to promote via the platform. The certification of Gambling at Google is a really tough issue, aligned with strict moderation watch and bans on campaigns. Truly, a very old and notorious problem many affiliates come across while deciding to launch Gambling campaigns through the traffic source.

Regardless of the fact, there are still ways to run ads for sweepstake casino offers, addressing independent performance marketing and advertising networks, such as RichAds. The moderation policy there is way more friendly towards Gambling products, while the traffic volumes and targeting capacity can easily compete with Google Ads platform:

• Ads in Telegram Mini Apps and bots.
  Fresh and highly relevant to the iGaming niche traffic source, regulated independently from the messenger’s ads policy. The audience comes mostly from play-to-earn and casual gaming applications, and is very responsive to Gambling products, for example, Telegram casinos. At RichAds such traffic is as affordable for launch as charging from $0.015 per click.
• Push-notification ads.
  A still extremely popular traffic source for all kinds of Gambling offers, targeting only the users who signed up to receive advertising notifications. Approaching players via push ads is quite efficient, as online casino ads accumulate up to 1 billion daily impressions worldwide there! The push traffic for sweepstake casinos can be bought starting from CPC bid of just $0.003
• Popunders.
  Advertising format that opens a new window with the offer’s landing or pre-landing page under the current browser tab. Great traffic volumes, cheap rates and extreme match with the Gambling audiences. Popunder traffic goes for sweepstake casino promotion at RichAds by minimum $0.5 CPM.

Conclusion

Despite the sudden policy update and exclusion of sweepstake casinos from the social casino list by Google Ads, it can’t be said that no one knew it was coming. As the regulatory coverage deepens with the amount and variety of iGaming products coming to the market, such policies will be clarified again in the future with the possible outcome of tightening. The best way to take this news is to prepare for the worst case scenario and provide yourself with the best one!

At RichAds we work with Gambling traffic and many of the iGaming products on a regular basis, providing marketers worldwide with quality leads across appropriate sources. Whether it’s push, in-page, pops, native, banner or even Telegram traffic you’ve picked for sweepstake casino offers promotion at RichAds — you will get the results you’re looking for!

What is RichAds?
Ad network for telegram ads,
high quality push and popunder ads,
domain redirect, native and display traffic source,
buy push ads at $0.005 (CPC), pop ads at $0.5 (CPM),
domain ads costs start from $1.5 (CPM), native ads — from $0.001 (CPC),
ad network offers large volumes of traffic in more than 200 geos from Tier 3 to Tier 1.