Cognitive Overload and Emotional Arousal: Why Gambling Content Marketing Appeals to Children and Resists Established Educational Interventions

Increased social media gambling advertising raises concerns about its strong appeal to children and its role in gambling-related harm. This study examines whether gambling content marketing is more emotionally appealing and less recognizable as advertising than conventional social media gambling ads, and whether a widely used UK school-based education program reduces these effects. In an experiment with 58 children aged 13–17, ad type (content marketing vs. conventional adverts) and education condition (treatment vs. control group) were the independent variables. Appeal, the dependent variable, combined self-reported emotional valence with physiological arousal (electrodermal activity), while advertising recognition was assessed via a forced-choice task. The Limited Capacity Model of Motivated Mediated Message Processing provides an interpretive lens to consider how emotionally engaging content may compete for children's limited processing resources. Gambling content marketing was four times more appealing than conventional ads, and in this small sample, only 7% of children correctly identified all content marketing as advertising. The educational intervention had negligible effects on reducing appeal or improving recognition. Overall, the findings suggest cognitive-based advertising literacy programs may struggle to counter emotionally engaging gambling ads, and show how combining self-report and physiological measures can strengthen assessments of the gambling advertising's appeal.