ASA’s AI monitoring system processed twice as many ads last year
The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has revealed that its Active Ad Monitoring system (AAMs), an AI tool released in 2023 to proactively search for online ads that break its rules, doubled the number of ads it processed in 2025 compared to 2024.
In 2025, the AAMs processed 60m ads and issued 68 formal rulings, equivalent to nearly one-quarter (23%) of all published rulings by the ASA.
As a result of the AAMs, the ASA also amended or removed 22,383 ads and resolved over 40,000 advertising complaints, the majority of which originated from the public.
“We are also using AI more widely to assist our work,” said Adam Davison, the ASA’s director of data science. “These tools now help speed up the formal investigation process, and further trials are planned in 2026.”
However, Davison acknowledged that AI tools “cannot replace many of the subtle and subjective judgements our teams have to make”, though he said they can “help our experts spend their time where it’s most valuable.”
For example, the ASA used the AAMs to monitor alcohol ads online, collecting 6,000 such paid-for ads across social media, search, and display advertising.
As regulatory projects manager Nicky Baker explained, the system “scanned and categorised the ads quickly and consistently”, after which ASA experts “reviewed any ads flagged as potentially problematic.” The workflow, Baker insisted, allowed ASA staff to “look beyond individual complaints”.
Overall compliance was high, with 96% of alcohol ads rated as compliant by the AAMs.
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‘Harmful online content continues to be a significant focus’
As Davison noted, AI tools are also making content creation more efficient, “enabling greater volumes of increasingly personalised ads”, and the ASA assessed an unspecified “growing number of complaints” involving AI-generated ads in 2025 compared to the year prior.
Ads more generally have become increasingly common on social media platforms. According to the ASA’s study of influencer ad disclosure last May, which analysed 50,000 posts across Instagram and TikTok, one in four posts on Instagram are ads. Likewise, one in six on TikTok are ads.
In March, Meta acknowledged its move to algorithmic content recommendations in the “post-follower era”. According to Meta, 70% of the content viewed by Meta users last year came from accounts they did not follow, compared to 0% in 2020.
Influencers, meanwhile, are still failing to disclose sponsored content as ads at an alarmingly high rate.
According to the ASA’s analysis of 509 UK-based accounts, just a slim majority (57%) of influencer ads complied with ASA disclosure rules. While this was up from 35% compliance reported in 2021, there is still substantial room for improvement in disclosure practices, particularly given that one-third (34%) of posts included no disclosure at all.
Apart from AI ads and influencer disclosure, ASA chair Nicky Morgan added that advertising faces several new challenges in its efforts at self-regulation.
“Harmful online content continues to be a significant focus. CAP’s rules on avoiding sexual objectification and harmful gender stereotypes are clear, but we now see these rules being challenged, for example, by in-app ads that are often easily accessible to children,” Morgan said. “The advertising of weight-loss prescription-only medicines is another issue that has escalated dramatically as the use of such medicines becomes more common.”
Morgan acknowledged the ad industry is facing rising calls for regulation from Parliament, Government and the public.
She added: “Our response is to consider whether and how such regulation might work in practice.”
Over two-fifths of influencer ads fail to meet ASA disclosure standards