The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA), the UK’s advertising regulator, is in the spotlight after declining to investigate claims that its own adverts were misleading. The story illustrates the many concerns and criticisms Adfree Cities has previously voiced about the ASA.
Adverts from the ASA, seen in public spaces in July, featured claims including that the ASA regulates ads “across all media” and “wherever you see or hear them”. The New Weather Institute and Badvertising reported the ads to the ASA on the grounds that they are misleading, and in breach of advertising codes of practice that the ASA is charged with enforcing.
The full complaint to the ASA about its ads can be read here.
Who watches the watchdog?
Shortly after the complaint was submitted, the ASA stated that investigating its own ads would be a conflict of interest. Later, the ASA clarified that there is no other course of action to process the New Weather Institute / Badvertising complaint.
In other words, the ASA’s own ads cannot be investigated under advertising rules.
The ASA’s ads assertively portray the regulator as all-seeing and all-powerful in their role to ensure advertising in the UK is “legal, decent, honest and truthful”. The ads also adopt the marketing slogans and imagery of household brands like Tesco and comparethemarket.com, an uncomfortable association given that the ASA should presumably maintain independence from companies whose marketing it regulates.
Speaking to The Guardian, Andrew Simms, a co-director of NWI and a co-founder of the campaign group Badvertising, said: “The ASA wants us to think they will protect the public from all toxic adverts, but they are in fact powerless to prevent multiple ads that misinform from going on show every day in the UK. It matters all the more that the body responsible for maintaining standards in advertising lives up to them itself. If a regulator publishes its own misleading ads you have a problem.”
Our experience has time and again shown that the ASA is more than happy to deem an advert “out of the remit” of its investigations.
Out of remit
- In 2024, Adfree Cities reported a large digital billboard advert for the airline Easyjet to the ASA. The billboard ad read “working towards net zero every day” – a clear example of greenwash from a major airline. The ASA declined to investigate, stating that the billboard was in the airline’s designated space within an airport and therefore outside the ASA’s remit.
- In 2021, the ASA refused to investigate ads for Qatar Airways reading “Fly Greener” seen on pitch-side hoardings during a football game. According to the ASA: “The content falls outside of our remit because the ASA is not entitled to regulate material arising from sponsorship.” The match was broadcast to 26 million viewers.
- Social media has provided advertisers with a fertile terrain in which to promote themselves, seemingly beyond the reach of the ASA. Marketing posts on X (Twitter) were not investigated by the ASA on the grounds that they weren’t paid-for, and ads by Shell, which had been banned by the ASA following a complaint by Adfree Cities, remained as banners on the oil company’s Twitter page, seemingly unreachable by the regulator.
- The ASA also declined to act on Chevron ads seen on twitter, which greenwashed the oil firm to such a degree that they were reported to the Federal Trade Commission. The watchdog cannot act on adverts for a company based outside of the UK, if the platform on which the ad is hosted is also outside of the UK (i.e. twitter, meta and many others).
Any ads that are flyposted or in shop windows are also not in the ASA’s scope. A variety of other specific exemptions are detailed on the ASA’s online remit pages.
A 2023 investigation by Adfree Cities and Badvertising found that of 503 complaints made to the ASA on environmental grounds in the preceding 12 months, only 65 were investigated and of those just 24 were formally resolved i.e. resulted in a published ruling from the ASA.
Where do we go from here?
Advertising is a powerful force influencing not only consumer choices but political opinion as well. Outdoor advertising remains underregulated in law (recent bans on vape ads and junk food ads don’t apply to outdoor advertising, for instance). While the ASA is charged with a huge task, strong and effective regulation is crucial to prevent unscrupulous marketing.
According to the Guardian, in 2024 the ASA acted to require the amendment or withdrawal of 33,309 ads. Could this confirm not only that the ASA is hard pressed to regulate such an enormous industry – but that its lack of legal and financial teeth are proving an insufficient deterrent to marketers?
Robbie Gillett, co-director at Adfree Cities, spoke to The Ecologist: “The ASA is structurally unable to address the cumulative impacts of harmful advertising. It has no power to levy financial penalties and some major polluters continue to publish misleading ads despite previous ASA rulings against them.“
“We urge the Department of Culture, Media and Sport to review the ASA’s limited remit and consult with a broader range of groups about how the marketing industries should be properly regulated.”
The UK needs a proper advertising regulator, independently funded and with the legal power to enforce its rules and sanction advertiser who flout those rules. Until then we will continue to see potentially harmful advertising slip through the cracks.
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