If you’re reading this then you may be an addict! No not to gambling or keeping up to date on what’s happening in the industry but to the internet itself.

A recent online study in the United States showed that over 30 percent of the 18,000 respondents used the internet to escape from negative feelings.

Now online gaming industry leaders in the UK are asking themselves should they be utilising the internet more as an advertising tool?

While glitzy and expensive gambling advertisements are now peppering our TV screens as a result of the new gambling act some are asking is this money well spent?

True the audience figures at one time on one of the bigger channels may be massive but do these viewers fall into the exact target audience for the gambling site or product being advertised?

Some in the online gaming world have been all too eager to flash their names across our screens but there isn’t much point in trying to sell an online gaming site at the ad break of soppy murder drama Rosemary and Thyme!

However there is a flip side to this of course.

Online bingo sites are making the most of the new laws. With target audiences being in the main middle aged women advertising as near as possible to TV soap operas seems to bear fruit. Sadly in the world of marketing and advertising stereotypes do exist and so Coronation Street and the likes equal women for Bingo sites!

Net gaming has been classified as one of the five strains of Internet addiction.

As more and more young people progress into daily internet users the amount of hits for online gaming sites are sure to rise.

Television may still be the most prominent means of advertising for some but is 30 seconds costing thousands of pounds as useful as a regular website masthead or link on a prominent site for a year? Time will tell.