The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) is the independent regulator of advertising across all UK media. They apply the UK Advertising Codes written by the Committees of Advertising Practice to ensure advertising is legal, decent, honest and truthful. The ASA handles complaints about misleading, harmful or offensive ads and also proactively monitors media. When reviewing ads, the ASA checks for violations of CAP (Committee of Advertising Practice) codes which cover issues like product claims, children, privacy and specific industries like gambling. The ASA aims to effectively regulate all media including online ads while balancing prevention and response to issues in a transparent, efficient manner.
2. The ASA
The Advertising Standards Authority is the UK’s independent
regulator of advertising across all media. We apply the
Advertising Codes, which are written by the Committees of
Advertising Practice. Our work includes acting on complaints and
proactively checking the media to take action against misleading,
harmful or offensive advertisements.
3. What does the ASA represent?
Each year, the UK public sees many millions of ads, direct marketing
and sales promotions about products, services, causes and
awareness campaigns. The vast majority of ads comply with the
advertising rules. The ASA are there to take action against those
that don’t.
Last year the ASA dealt with 31,458 complaints and thoroughly
assessed every one of those concerns and investigated ads that
seemed to breach the rules.
4. What is the ASA’s role and function
Their mission is to ensure that advertising in all media is legal,
decent, honest and truthful, to the benefit of consumers,
business and society.
The ASA aim to achieve their mission by getting better at
regulating ads in all media, and in particular by:
-Making a success of regulating online ads
-Being an effective part of the response to societal issues shown
to be affected by advertising
-Placing more emphasis on prevention rather than cure
-Being more efficient and in tune with consumers, business and
society
5. Procedures and standard of service
The ASA’s procedures are transparent and open to scrutiny. They
also work to published standards of service. They commit to:
-Being accessible to members of the public and the advertising
industry
-Resolving complaints without undue delay, whilst recognising that
complex complaints can take longer than the average
-Being effective in meeting the needs of our customers, whether
members of the public or industry
-Delivering a high quality and professional service
-Being open about our procedures and our decision making, and
accountable for our performance
6. CAP Codes
To analyse adverts to see if they are okay to air on television, the
ASA check them by looking for CAP codes. If an advert use a single
CAP code then the advert will be deemed inappropriate and be
scrapped straight away.
7. What are the Cap Codes?
There are many codes that need to be addressed when producing an
advert, and many precudures need to be put into place. There are
regulation and terms documents and downloads on the ASA’s website.
Producers of adverts would have to look at these and produce their
advert accordingly.
A few examples of codes and terms in which adverts need to follow, are;
Misleading customers
Harmful and offensive adverts
Children
Privacy
Distance Selling
Environment Claims
Gambling
Alcohol
Motoring
Tobacco
Each section above has its own rules regarding what they can show in
adverts;
8. Below, are the different sections of rules that adverts need to apply
to, each section can be downloaded and viewed online. Businesses
would need to look at these in detail to ensure that their advert is
appropriate.
9. How is the ASA important in
Advertising
Consumers and customers are the main priority of any business, if
they’re not happy then the business wont achieve or succeed. The
ASA is important as it ensures both partys are happy. They look into
adverts and analyse them to make sure that no consumer will be
mislead or offended. A succesful advert is one that sells a product or
service, attracts the market and consumers, and puts the business’
name out there. These things need to be remembered for the right
reason, and the ASA’s aim is to do so.
