• ClickZ, Monday, October 9, 2006 11:45 AM

If the U.S. is cracking down on online gambling, what's the ad fallout? There may be no way to accurately quantify, given that the many online casino and sports betting marketers used a tangled Web of third-party ad networks and affiliates to put their ads in front of American consumers. But there is no question that the passage of stiff legislation forbidding credit-card companies from processing payments from online gambling companies will have a detrimental effect on spending in that sector.

International outfits like 888 Holdings and PartyGaming, the entities behind PartyPoker.com and PartyCasino.com, have officially closed their doors to U.S. bettors. It's been questionably illegal for those companies to show ads on U.S. Web sites for some time, but the new legislation means it's no longer okay for gambling companies to show ads to American visiting sites, like Reuters UK or BBC News.

Insiders estimate that PartyGaming, for example, spends anywhere from $100 to $200 million trying to reach the U.S. audience. Nearly 84 percent of its online players are American--a source of concern for the gambling provider. The outlook is also bleak for online gambling affiliates. Marc Lesniak, who heads up the Casino Affiliate Convention series of conferences, estimates that the average gambling affiliate site operator generates between $2,000 and $25,000 per month through ad commissions from gambling sites. Despite tough legislation, Lesniak doesn't think online gambling will go away. "There's way, way, way, too much money in this business to stop it," he said. "It'd be like trying to stop an ocean liner going full speed on a dime."

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