Out-Law News 1 min. read
25 Jun 2010, 2:59 pm
Ad regulator the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has been doing some soul-searching about the way it does its job, and it is considering demanding that competitors pay to complain to it. It says it will "consider introducing charging for competitor complaints (perhaps with a sliding scale of fees coupled with a fast-track process)".
Complaints to the ASA fall into three camps: complaints from the public; complaints generated by the ASA itself after viewing material; and complaints from competing companies. Those may soon generate the ASA some new revenue.
This raises some obvious questions:
The size of the fee will be a huge factor. The absence of a fee at present is what makes some companies take certain complaints to the ASA rather than a courtroom. We won't know more about the fee proposal until we see the ASA's final response to the review next year.
The ASA hired consultants to make recommendations on the way it works, and has decided to change some of the ways it goes about its business.
Some of the other measures are just good sense (measure waiting times; encourage shorter submissions), but some of the improvements the ASA is committing to could have a real impact.
The regulator says, for example, that it wants to talk more to pre-screening body Clearcast to work out a more consistent interpretation of ad rules. This is surely to be welcomed by advertisers, since a number of ads that are passed by Clearcast end up being banned by the ASA.
The ASA also wants to be clearer about when it will resolve complaints informally.
