The Online Advertising Taskforce was created to address illegal harms and the protection of children in relation to online advertising. It was part of the Online Advertising Programme and its key objectives are:
- improving the evidence around the scale and threat of the in-scope harms; and
- identifying ways to enhance voluntary industry initiatives or standards to tackle the drivers of the in-scope harms.
It has carried out work in six workstreams and recently published an update.
Gold Standard. This increases industry awareness and uptake of the IAB UK's Gold Standard certification scheme on standards for buyers and sellers of digital advertising space. It has plans to identify new advertiser pledge supporters (the pledge enables brands to commit to working with certified companies) and ISBA will soon issue an updated version of its Media Services Framework.
Influencer marketing. This group aims to identify and agree better standards for influencer advertising, and its recommendations fed into ISBA's revised Influencer Code of Conduct.
Intermediary and Platform Principles (IPP). This group was designed to monitor and receive updates relating to the ASA and IAB UK's IPP project. The IPP involved some of the largest companies in the digital advertising supply chain – Adform, Amazon Ads, Google, Index Exchange, Magnite, Meta, Snap Inc., TikTok, Yahoo For Business, and X (formerly Twitter). It was devised to help explore whether and, if so, how the UK advertising self-regulatory system might evolve to bring greater transparency and broader accountability to its work online. The Taskforce recommends that online platforms continue to follow existing IPP practice, while it considers (alongside the ASA and IAB UK) if and how to formalise IPP into the ASA regulatory framework.
The Taskforce also considered how to reduce children's exposure to advertising for age-restricted products (see below), information sharing and research. In terms of research, the working group will re-group to consider a workplan which may include a summary of the online advertising harms that come within scope of the Taskforce's activity and the gaps it has identified in the evidence base. With regard to information sharing, the group intends to consider how it can evaluate the impact of information sharing work and how external stakeholders can be integrated into the sharing of relevant information.
It will continue its activities for the next twelve months.
ASA report
As well as the Online Advertising Taskforce, the ASA issued a report providing insight into the online supply pathway of ads for alcohol, gambling and other age-restricted ads.
The ASA's five year strategy commits to protecting children and other vulnerable audiences and bringing greater transparency and broader accountability to this and other areas of its online advertising regulation.
The ASA says that the study should help to reduce children's exposure to age-restricted ads online. It also shows what measures are already being used to target age-restricted ads away from children in line with CAP Guidance on Age-restricted Ads Online.
Whilst there are relatively few breaches of the advertising codes, the ASA says that it remains important to examine the circumstances that led to certain ads being mistargeted to sites disproportionately popular with children. For example, the report provides specific case study evidence around mis-categorisation of age-restricted ads, which, if categorised correctly, are likely to have prevented the ad from being served, and inadequacies relating to the blocklisting of publications disproportionately popular with children.
