T4 - Regulation

There are two main bodies that regulate advertising in the UK, they are; The ASA and OFCOM.

The ASA

The ASA (Advertising Standard Authority) is an independent regulator of advertising across all media in the UK. They take it upon themselves to apply the advertising codes, written by the Committees of Advertising Practice, and to take action against the advertising that doesn't follow these codes, for example, featuring offensive, misleading or harmful advertisement.

The ASA deals with pretty much all types of advertising including;

• Adverts in magazines/newspapers.
• Radio/TV/cinema commercials.
• Television shopping channels.
• Online adverts, i.e. Banner or display ads, sponsored or paid-for search, external marketing on a companies website and other space they have control over like social networking sites - Twitter and Facebook.
• Adverts sent through e-mail and text messages, door drops - no name (junk mail) and          Direct mail -    addressed to you personally.
• leaflets and brochures, posters, CDs, DVDs, video and fax.
• Sales promotion - special offers, prize draws, competitions.

The ASA responds to a complaint by following a number of steps at the end of which will make an organisation change or take-down their advert, otherwise they face further action in order to make sure the ruling is followed. these steps are detailed below and come straight from their website about how to complain.

OFCOM

OFCOM is another regulator of communication industries in the UK, they monitor the TV and radio, along with postal services, fixed line telecoms, and mobiles. They make sure people get the best communication services protection from scammers, while allowing companies to excel. However, they are not responsible for; disputes between you and your provider, organising premium-rate services, the content of television and radio adverts, BBC accuracy complaints, a BBC licence fee.
They respond to complaints by asking the Broadcaster for a copy of the programme in question, they then analyse it to see if it follows/breaches the broadcasting code. Ofcom demand a response from the broadcaster to the complaint, and upon this response, they mark the complaint as 'Upheld/Not upheld/resolved.

Codes of TV Broadcasting

The code is produced by Ofcom and was last updated on 28 February 2011. The code consists of 10 sections and 4 appendix's:

Sections
Protecting the under-eighteens
Harm and offence
Crime
Religious
Due impartiality and due accuracy and undue prominence of views and opinions
Elections and referendums
Fairness
Privacy
Commercial references in television programming
Commercial communications in radio programming.

appendix
Extracts from relevant UK legislation
Extracts from the EU audiovisual media services directive (directive 2010/13/EU)
European convention on human rights articles 8, 9, 10, and 14
Financial promotions and investment recommendations

More details and specifics about individual guidelines can be viewed at:
http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/broadcasting/broadcast-codes/broadcast-code/