Digital teams warned not to fall foul of advertising watchdog

ASA will soon have power to punish spurious claims on company web sites and social media postings

The ASA has extended its remit to cover what businesses posted online

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has extended its remit to regulate advertisers’ marketing communications on their own web sites and in free space online. The changes will be made from 1 March 2011.

As well as traditional broadcast advertising, the ASA’s current remit applies to marketing communications across all non-broadcast media, including online, where it covers advertisements in paid-for space and sales promotions wherever they appear. This has now been extended to cover advertising statements made on businesses’ own web sites and social media postings.

Andy Burton, chairman of the Cloud Industry Forum and chief executive of Fasthosts, said that for end users' digital teams, the new move shouldn’t mean much more than incorporating commercial common sense into what they do online, but he warned that some are not yet doing that.

“Historically, when it comes to online activity, businesses haven’t taken the ASA that seriously. This is not the result of the absence of knowledge when it comes to advertising – they will have learnt the ropes through their broadcast activity – but they have never felt that they were likely to be found out and prosecuted, challenged or embarrassed by what they do online."

This announcement will change things, according to Burton, who continued: “Businesses will now have to set out their web presence with the same care as anything they would do in a physical medium. That’s really all this is asking for.”

He added that the announcement should also curb the volume of spurious advertising, where people or organisations register domains such as “The Top 10 “productnamehere”.com - inferring that they are independent advice web sites, along the lines of more credible web sites such as Moneysupermarket.com.

The ASA said that the move to extend its remit was prompted by the fact that over 2008-2009, it rejected about 3,500 complaints relating to the content of organisations’ own web sites because they fell outside its remit.

The extra cost of its expanded remit will be financed by an initial £200,000 contribution from Google and an extension of the 0.1 per cent voluntary levy on paid-for advertisements that currently funds the ASA.