The Core Principle: Certification Is Per-Country, Not Global

The single most important thing to understand before you start is that gambling advertising approval is never a one-time, global event on either platform. You do not get “certified for gambling” the way you might verify a business once and be done with it. Instead, certification is tied to specific countries, specific licenses, and in some cases specific websites or domains.

This means an operator with a license in the UK and a separate license in Spain has to go through the certification process separately for each country, even on the same platform, even using the same ad account. If you are planning a multi-market launch, this has real implications for your timeline: you cannot treat certification as a single pre-launch task. It is a per-market workstream that needs to be scheduled market by market.

It also means that a certification you hold for one country gives you no coverage in another, even a neighboring one with similar gambling laws. A license and approval covering Germany does not unlock the Netherlands, France, or any other market, however similar the regulatory environment might look on paper.

Google Ads Gambling Certification: The Process

Step 1: Confirm the country is actually open for gambling ads

Before anything else, check whether Google permits gambling advertising in your target country at all. Google maintains a list of markets where its gambling and games advertising program operates, and it is not every country where online gambling itself is legal. Some countries where gambling is fully licensed and regulated still are not on Google’s approved advertising list, which means no amount of paperwork will get you certified there.

Google has also been expanding and tightening this list at different points throughout 2026, including a notable change in August 2026 that altered how certification works for ads served through its programmatic (Authorized Buyers) channel versus standard Google Ads. The practical lesson here: do not assume last year’s list, or even last quarter’s, is still accurate. Check Google’s current gambling and games certification documentation directly before you plan a market entry.

Step 2: Confirm you hold a license Google will accept for that specific country

Google requires proof of a valid local gambling license for the country you are targeting. This has to be a license issued by the relevant authority for that specific jurisdiction. A license from one regulator does not transfer credibility to a different country’s certification application, even if both countries recognize each other’s licenses for other legal purposes.

Have your licensing documentation current, accurate, and clearly tied to the legal entity that owns the domain you will be advertising. A mismatch between your licensed entity name and your advertiser or domain registration is a common reason certification gets delayed or denied.

Step 3: Submit the certification application for that country

Google’s gambling certification is applied for through a dedicated certification form within Google Ads, separate from your standard account settings. You will need to provide your business details, the specific country or countries you are applying for, your domain, and your licensing documentation.

As of policy changes rolled out across 2026, Google has also required advertisers to demonstrate general “policy health” on their account as part of gambling certification eligibility, meaning accounts with a recent history of policy violations may find certification harder to obtain, even if the gambling-specific paperwork is in order. If your account or agency has had unrelated compliance issues recently, it is worth resolving those before applying for gambling certification, not after.

Review timelines vary and have gotten stricter over the course of 2026, with Google tightening the certification process around its March and August updates specifically. Build in real buffer time, measured in weeks, not days, when you are planning a launch date.

Step 4: Prepare your landing page to match

Google checks your landing page content against your certification scope, not just your ad copy. Your site needs to clearly display responsible gambling information, accurate representation of the gambling products you actually offer, and nothing outside the scope of what you were certified for. If your certification covers sports betting and your site also promotes casino games, that mismatch is a common rejection trigger even after certification is granted.

Step 5: Repeat for every additional country and monitor ongoing validity

Each new country is a new application. And certification is not a one-time event that lasts forever: Google can revoke it if your license lapses, if your account’s policy health declines, or if ongoing compliance checks turn up an issue. Treat certification as something to actively maintain, not something to file away once approved.

Meta Gambling Ad Authorization: The Process

Meta’s process is structured differently from Google’s, though the underlying principle – country-specific, license-backed approval – is the same.

Step 1: Confirm the country is not on Meta’s unsupported markets list

Like Google, Meta maintains its own list of countries where gambling advertising is not permitted at all, regardless of your licensing status. This list is not identical to Google’s, so clearing Google’s country check does not mean you have cleared Meta’s. Check Meta’s current restricted markets for gambling and gaming directly before applying.

Step 2: Submit your authorization request through Meta Business Suite

Since mid-2025, Meta centralized this process into the “Authorizations and Verifications” tab inside Meta Business Suite, replacing what used to be a manual, email-based written-permission process. You will need to specify your Business Manager ID, the specific country or countries you are requesting, and documentation proving your gambling activity is properly licensed or otherwise legally established in each territory.

You will also need to declare your role, whether you are the operator, an aggregator, or an affiliate, since each of these categories is treated slightly differently in Meta’s review.

Step 3: Wait for review, and plan around the real timeline

Meta’s gambling authorization process typically takes several weeks, and applications covering more countries or more complex licensing structures can take longer. This is meaningfully slower than most standard Meta ad account reviews, and it catches a lot of first-time applicants off guard when they assume Meta approvals move at the same speed as a normal ad.

Step 4: Respect the age and targeting requirements

Across every approved market, Meta requires that gambling ads never target anyone under 18, regardless of the local legal gambling age if it happens to be lower. This is a platform-wide floor, not a country-specific variable.

Step 5: Handle affiliates and influencers separately

If your gambling marketing involves affiliates or influencers, know that Meta treats them as requiring their own authorization in most cases. An affiliate promoting a licensed operator generally needs to register and be approved separately, even though they are promoting an already-authorized brand. The one common exception is when the licensed operator itself creates the ad and simply tags an influencer or creator in it; in that specific setup, the tagged creator typically does not need separate authorization. But if the affiliate or influencer is creating and running their own ad account’s campaign, they need their own approval. This is one of the most commonly missed requirements, and it is a frequent cause of affiliate campaigns getting shut down even when the core operator relationship is fully compliant.

Step 6: Know that authorization is not permanent

Similar to Google, Meta’s authorization is not a one-and-done status. It is tied to your continued license validity in each territory, and significant changes – like a new country, a new licensed entity, or a change in your business structure – generally require submitting an update or an “add territory” request rather than assuming your existing approval automatically extends.

Country-by-Country: How to Actually Approach This

Because the specific list of approved countries, license requirements, and application nuances shift throughout the year on both platforms, we are deliberately not printing a static table of “approved countries” here; any such list risks being outdated within months, and running a gambling campaign off a stale list is exactly how accounts end up suspended. Instead, here is the research process we would recommend for any new market:

1. Check both platforms’ current approved/restricted country lists independently. Do not assume overlap. A market open on Google may be closed on Meta, or vice versa.
2. Confirm your license is accepted for that exact country, issued by the specific regulator that country’s advertising policy recognizes, not a license from a different but related jurisdiction.
3. Check for sub-national rules. Some countries, the US being the clearest example, regulate gambling advertising at the state level, not nationally. A federal-level green light does not mean every state is open, and both platforms require this to be handled state by state in markets structured this way.
4. Build your rollout sequence around the slowest approval, not the fastest. If you are planning a five-country launch, your public launch date should be set by your longest expected certification timeline, not your shortest. Launching in three approved markets while two are still pending is almost always a better plan than delaying everything until all five clear.
5. Revisit your country list regularly, not just at launch. Both platforms have changed market eligibility multiple times within 2026 alone. A country that was closed when you last checked may have opened, or vice versa.

Planning Your Launch Timeline Around This Reality

Given that certification can take anywhere from roughly one to several weeks per country, and that it needs to happen separately for every market, the practical implication for a betting or gaming operator planning a launch is this: certification needs to start well before your intended go-live date, and it needs to be sequenced deliberately.

A reasonable approach looks like this: identify your priority launch markets early, start certification applications for your two or three highest-priority countries immediately, and treat any additional markets as a second wave that begins once the first batch is in motion, not after it is complete. Trying to certify ten markets simultaneously as a first-time applicant usually just means ten slow-moving applications instead of a few fast ones.

When to Bring in Specialist Help

Gambling ad certification sits at the intersection of marketing, legal compliance, and platform policy, and it changes often enough that even teams who have done it before need to re-verify requirements on every new launch. If you are planning a multi-market rollout, or if you are new to this process and trying to hit a specific launch date, working with an agency that manages certification applications regularly can save weeks of back-and-forth, particularly around the documentation and entity-matching issues that cause most delays.

If you are not sure where to start, the fastest useful first step is usually a market-by-market audit: confirming exactly which of your target countries are currently open on each platform, what licensing you already have versus what you would need, and a realistic sequencing plan based on that. That one piece of groundwork tends to prevent most of the downstream delays described above.