ASA REGULATION | ADVERTISEMENT

 Here I will use ASA UK as an example.

What is ASA?

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) 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 (CAP). Through ASA, people can submit a complaint towards ads which they will take action of.

https://www.asa.org.uk/

Case Study - Wild Cosmetics Ltd

https://www.asa.org.uk/rulings/wild-cosmetics-ltd-a22-1172513-wild-cosmetics-ltd.html

This is talking about a advertisement seen in 2022, advertising their product called Wild Deodorant. This ad contains a woman sitting on bed and seemed to be masturbating under the bedcovers, watching a computer screen when she was interrupted by a talking polar bear which joined her in bed and proceed to do inappropriate talking. This complaint was made by a parent of a 10 year old son who accidentally watched it when he wanted to watch a Minecraft video.

From then the company said they have taken care of the ad and claimed to target audience based on users’ interest like health and beauty. They also mentioned how they didn’t choose which videos to show their ads and rely on the algorithm and would add channels aimed at children to be excluded. They also didn’t comment on any specific targeting of the ad which was provided by Google’s Google Ads.

ASA received the ad and have considered that the ad should have been appropriately targeted to avoid the risk of children seeing it. They have accepted the information that the advertisers has targeted to be based on potential customers and already excluded some channels which still proven to be unsuccessful.

They took actions to tell the company to ensure their ads were rightfully targeted and those that are unsuitable for children to not appear in media that was likely to appeal to children.

This breached CAP Code 1.3