ASA to report on digital platforms’ role in enforcing ad code

The ASA is partnering with digital media giants including Meta and Google on a new pilot that aims to bring transparency to the role online companies play in upholding advertising regulation.

In what is billed as a “world first”, the pilot brings together IAB UK trade body members including Adform, Amazon Ads, Google, Index Exchange, Meta (Facebook), TikTok, Twitter, and Yahoo.

The UK advertising watchdog will provide interim and final reports on how well participating companies show they can abide by “The Intermediary and Platform Principles”.

The principles are aimed at providing an independent account of the digital players’ performance and identifying examples of good and/or poor practice.

Though broadcast advertising needs to be cleared by organisations like Clearcast, no such system currently exists for digital media.

The pilot’s principles state that participating companies must:

• Bring to advertisers’ attention, in a reasonably prominent way, the requirement for
  advertisements aimed at a UK audience to comply with the CAP Code;
• Ensure their advertising policies and applicable contractual terms require advertisements aimed at a UK audience to comply with the CAP Code;
• Assist the ASA in promoting the public’s and advertisers’ awareness of the ASA system;
• In relation to the requirement for advertisers to minimise children’s and young persons’ exposure to ads attracting an age targeting restriction under the CAP Code (and where such ads are permitted by the participating company’s own policies), take reasonable and appropriate measures to make advertisers aware of: the tools or controls that can be used on the service to support advertisers to comply with the requirement; who provides and/or selects the tools/controls; and, who is responsible for activating and controlling them;
• On receipt of a relevant notice from the CAP Compliance function, act swiftly to remove a non-compliant ad that is the subject of a specific breach of the CAP Code as determined by, or directly related to, a published ASA ruling, in instances where the advertiser fails to appropriately amend or withdraw its non-compliant ad;
• On receipt of a relevant notice from the CAP Compliance function, act swiftly to remove a non-compliant ad that is indisputably a prima facie breach of the CAP Code, in instances where the advertiser fails to appropriately amend or withdraw its non-compliant ad;
• Respond in a timely way to reasonable requests for information from the ASA in relation to advertisers’ use of the company’s services, to assist investigation of a suspected breach of the CAP Code, in instances where the information cannot be obtained from the advertiser or, where appropriate, their agency.

The pilot will begin in June 2022 and run for one year.

Guy Parker, the ASA’s CEO, said: “The role that leading digital companies play to uphold advertising standards online and help deliver better outcomes for the public is not well-known or understood.

“This pilot brings more accountability and transparency to this area of our work and serves as an important contribution to future policy thinking in this area”.