The ASA recently commissioned research to help it better understand public concerns about advertising and inform its regulatory priorities. More than 6000 UK residents took part in a survey.
It has now issued the first in a series of reports based on the survey findings. This report focuses on thematic ad-related concerns, examining key issues that matter to the public. Some of these concerns fall within the ASA's regulatory remit, while others—such as political advertising—sit outside it.
To set the scene, it asked about national concerns, with the availability of healthcare services topping the list, mentioned by 54% of the UK population. This is followed by the cost of weekly shopping/household bills (48%) and concerns around climate change (34%).
The survey also asked respondents about their top three concerns relating to the broader media landscape, including some relating to advertising.
Misinformation or 'fake news' (46%) was the most mentioned issue, followed by a perceived lack of impartial news sources (29%) and the use of deep fakes (28%). 11% mentioned misleading, harmful or seriously offensive ads as one of their top three concerns – and a similar proportion raised concerns around the amount of advertising.
Responses were relatively consistent across the home nations, but there were some notable differences across demographic groups. Men are more likely than women to mention a lack of impartial news sources (men 33%, women 25%) and foreign ownership of media (men 19%, women 10%). In contrast, women are more likely to mention concerns around offensive or hateful content online (women 29%, men 19%) and sexual/pornographic content (women 14%, men 8%).
Younger people were more likely to be concerned about the use of AI in the media (26%); adults aged 35-54 were more likely to mention misinformation (49%); and adults aged 55 or over were more likely to mention illegal content (25%).
The survey went on to explore concerns around a range of specific ad-related topics.
Key concerns were scams and fraudulent advertising, as well as children seeing content aimed at adults. When it came to being worried about themselves or others, people were worried about scams on both levels, but were more concerned about children and advertising for age-restricted products at a societal level.
The ASA published a separate update on scams a couple of weeks ago. The research resonates in the context of calls by Which this week for faster implementation of duties under the Online Safety Act to prevent fraudulent advertising online. It said
"Under the current timetable for the Online Safety Act, firms in scope of the fraudulent advertising duties in the Act will not be held accountable for breach of those duties until 2027, This is simply not good enough and leaves consumers unnecessarily exposed to countless scam ads".
In the coming weeks, the ASA will be publishing further results from the survey, which it says are helping to prioritise its work to protect vulnerable people and ensure ads across all media are legal, decent, honest and truthful.
