Advertising Standards Authority (ASA)

In today’s world, advertising promotes healthy competition as it informs and entertains. The ASA ensures that’s consumers can both enjoy and trust the adverts they see.

ASA builds trust from the public by enforcing ‘Advertising Codes’ written by the Committee of Advertising Practice; they also act swiftly when marketing communications break the rules.

The Advertising Standards Authority send clear signals about what is and what is not acceptable in advertising across a wide range of sectors, every week. As a result, the UK industry’s commitment to responsible advertising makes sure the ads, the public see are legal, decent, honest and truthful.

The UK marketing industry recognised the need for trust in advertising when it set up the advertising self-regulatory system for non-broadcast advertising in 1961. Since then, the UK’s system of self-regulation has helped to ensure advertising remains responsible: honest advertising helps to keep customers coming back.

Today, the UK advertising regulatory system is a mixture of self-regulation for non-broadcast advertising and co-regulation for broadcast advertising.

This means that the system is paid for by the industry, which also writes the rules, but those rules are independently enforced by the ASA.
The system is a sign of a considerable commitment by the advertising industry to uphold standards in their profession.

All parts of the advertising industry – advertisers, agencies and media – have come together to commit to being legal, decent, honest and truthful in their ads.