Watchdog questions online health and beauty adverts

In a report on digital advertising, the UK watchdog said overall compliance with ASA rules was very high although adverts for cosmetics and health products were most likely to fall foul of the codes of conduct.

In a survey of 551 ads in the summer of this year, only 16 were found to be in breach of the CAP code, which represents a compliance rate of 97 per cent.

Director General of the ASA, Christopher Graham said: “The survey findings should go some way to dispelling the perception that digital is the “wild west” of media.​

“Self-regulation clearly works in digital media and where marketing activity is subject to the ASA’s scrutiny, there is a high compliance rate with the rules.”​

Health and beauty problems​

The survey was not unremittingly positive in its conclusions and most of the negative points centered on the health and beauty sector.

Of the 16 adverts that breached the CAP code, 10 occurred in the health and beauty sector.

The report stated: “To find ten breaches in a sub-sample of 36 ads was concerning. The 72 per cent compliance rate indicates that the sector should be singled out for special attention when monitoring online ads in the future.”​

Within the health and beauty sector adverts for slimming products and skin creams were highlighted were as the most likely to be guilty of disobeying ASA rules.

Two e-mail adverts for skin creams, for example, were found to contain unsubstantiated claims, suggesting the products had a physiological anti-ageing effect.

The ASA said commercial e-mails for cosmetics were a potential cause for concern although the small sample size limits the gravity of this conclusion.

Limiting factors of survey​

In general, drawing firm conclusions from the ASA survey is limited by a number of factors.

Much of the data collected was from sponsored search ads where, from an almost limitless number of possibilities, the ASA chose 16 search terms that were already on an ASA product category list.

The advertising watchdog pointed out that a different set of terms could have produced very different results. If the ASA had chosen ‘botox’, for example, every resultant ad would have breached the CAP Code because prescription-only medicine cannot be advertised to the public.

Another limiting factor is the extent of the ASA remit. While the ASA received around 3,500 complaints about digital media, around 70 per cent of those were related to advertising that fell outside of the ASA remit.

The internet is fast becoming the biggest advertising channel in the UK, according to the ASA. With a quarter of the total market, the internet is only one pert cent behind TV and is growing fast suggesting that in 2009 it may overtake TV as the biggest advertising medium in the UK.