ASA - Advertising Standards Authority

The ASA, Advertising Standards Authority, is the UK's independent regulator of advertising across all media. They apply the Advertising Codes written by the Committees of Advertising Practice. The ASA take care of complaints made about advertisements and they also take action against misleading, harmful or offensive advertisements. They work across the whole of the advertising industry. The ASA's purpose is to make sure that all advertisements are responsible, and their ambition is to make every advert in the UK a responsible advert.
The ASA follow 5 things;

• Understanding - they will be open to all calls and will be fair and balanced when assessing to problem.
• Support - they will support advertisers while they make responsible adverts.
• Impact - they'll spend time on the things that matter most and what makes the biggest difference.
• Proactive - they'll work with others and be proactive. Even if they haven't received a complaint of an advert, they will try to tackle to ads that effect the more vulnerable of people.
• Awareness - they will ensure that the public, civil society and the advertising industry know who they are, they will raise awareness of themselves so that people know who to go to when necessary.

If something is deemed misleading, harmful or offensive then it is therefore in breach of the UK Advertising Codes and therefore must be withdrawn or amended and the advertiser must not use the same approach again. In 2012, the ASA considered 31,298 complaints about 18990 cases and they actively checked thousands of those advertisements. Their work meant that 3,700 advertisements had had to be changed or withdrawn. All parts of the advertising industry including the advertisers, agencies and media, have come together to commit to being legal, decent, honest and truthful in what they advertise.

The UK Advertising Codes are written by two industries; the Committee of Advertising Practice and the Broadcast Committee of Advertising Practice (BCAP). The Committee of Advertising Practice writes the UK Code of Non-broadcast Advertising, Sales Promotion and Direct Marketing. BCAP writes the UK Code of Broadcast Advertising.

To make sure that adverts stay within the ASA's rules, the ASA don't only act on complaints. They carry out many other activities also. For example, the ASA checks ads in all media and regularly conducts surveys of advertisements published by sectors where there is either unsatisfactory compliance with the Codes or where there are societal concerns about that sector. With CAP, committee of advertising practice, they both support the industry to help them get their ads right before they're published. This includes providing guidance, pre-publication advice and training for the industry.

Every year in the UK, there are millions of non-broadcast ads published. It would therefore be impossible for the ASA to pre-clear every single one of them. To put this into perspective, there are more than 30 million press advertisements and 100 million pieces of direct marketing every year. Even though the ASA cannot directly speak to every single advertiser, there is a lot of help, advice and guidance through CAP Advice and Training. It includes free bespoke pre-publication advice from Copy Advice and online resources that advertisers, agencies and the media can use to check the latest positions on hundreds of different advertising issues.