More than 30 organisations have donated media inventory to the Advertising Standards Authority’s (ASA) latest public awareness campaign, which aims to reassure the public that adverts are being regulated across all media.
Netflix and Waitrose are among the media owners to donate inventory, with the streamer running the 30-second ad on its ad-supported plan, and Waitrose featuring a bespoke ASA ad in the Your Week in Food newspaper distributed in stores.
The ASA Public Awareness Campaign has been running since 2022, and many media owners have increased the amount of inventory they have donated this year.
Brand partners Churchill, Compare the Market, Marmite and Tesco have also lent their famous straplines to the campaign, with Compare the Market’s Aleksandr the meerkat featuring in the updated TV advert.
Leith developed the campaign creative, and WPP Media’s EssenceMediacom handled the media planning. It is now live and will run for eight weeks across TV, digital channels, out-of-home sites, radio, cinema, press and magazines.
The ASA says its research found that people who have seen or heard the campaign ads are twice as likely to trust adverts as those who have not.
Miles Lockwood, director of complaints and investigations at the ASA, said the campaign plays a “vital role” in raising awareness for the regulator.
The campaign is also a key pillar of the Advertising Association’s ongoing campaign to protect and build public trust in advertising. In July, it launched its industry Trust Action Plan in Westminster. The ASA awareness campaign fulfils its first action point, which calls on the industry to scale it up.
Since the campaign began, the Advertising Association says public trust in adverts has risen from 30% to a five-year high of 40% in 2025, although it says recovery remains fragile.
The organisations donating inventory include Acast, Actual Radio, Alight Media, Bauer Media Group, Bauer Media Outdoor, Channel 4, Digital Cinema Media, Google, ITV, London Evening Standard, MediaForce, Media Smart, Meta, Mail Metro Media, Netflix, News UK, NextGen Media, Ocean Outdoor, Pearl & Dean, Pinterest, Reach, Snap Inc., Sky, Spotify, STV, STV Radio, Telegraph Media Group, Tesco.com, TikTok, UK Community Radio Network, and Waitrose.
The awareness push comes as the regulator seeks to demonstrate the scale of its work. In 2025, the ASA resolved over 40,000 complaints about 25,397 ads, resulting in 22,383 ads being amended or removed. Its AI-powered Active Ad Monitoring system processed 60m ads, which the ASA says allows it to proactively identify and tackle issues in high-priority areas.
