The Kindred Group’s online gambling brands were Sweden’s second-largest advertisers in 2018, according to new market research.

On Monday, Swedish newspaper Dagens Media reported new advertising statistics that show Kindred Group brands such as Unibet and MariaCasino spent a total of SEK985m (US$108.7m) raising their local awareness in 2018, ranking second on the overall chart behind Sweden’s largest grocer Ica, which spent SEK1.06b.

The stats, compiled by local social researchers Sifo, showed a significant rise in spending by Kindred brands, which ranked ninth in terms of overall spending in 2017. Kindred even surpassed Procter & Gamble, which was relegated to third place with a mere SEK678m marketing outlay.

Gaming companies accounted for six of 2018’s top-20 advertisers, with the state-run former monopoly Svenska Spel in sixth place (up from seventh in 2017) with SEK562m. The other four gaming firms were Cherry AB’s new Snabbare (Faster) brand in 16th place with SEK357m, just ahead of Global Gaming (17th, SEK348m), state-run horse betting monopoly ATG (19th, SEK327m) and LeoVegas (20th, SEK322m).