The ASA: ensuring the industry's own rules work

The beginning of advertising self-regulation

The ASA was set up by the marketing industry to make independent decisions on whether marketing communications break the industry's own set of rules.  In 1961, CAP published the first edition of the Code and established the ASA, which began adjudicating on complaints against the Code in 1962.  Click here to read the History of advertising regulation section of our website to find out how the system of self-regulation was established and developed.  The effectiveness of the system over 40 years was a factor in the broadcast regulator Ofcom's decision to contract out the regulation of broadcast advertising to CAP(Broadcast) and the ASA in 2004.

The principles of the codes
 
The advertising codes are based on sound business sense: marketing communications should be legal, decent, honest and truthful, prepared responsibly and should respect the principles of fair competition. The Codes are applied in the spirit as well as the letter. The rules protect consumers, but they also benefit business by maintaining a level playing field for marketers and ensuring that marketing communications as a whole are not brought into disrepute. The ASA's role is to decide if the codes have been broken. The ASA's independent decision-making ensures that consumers can have confidence in the marketing communications they see. A system that boosts consumers' trust in marketing is good for business.

How the system is funded

The  system is financed by advertisers through a small levy of 0.1% on display advertising expenditure and airtime and 0.2% of the Royal Mail's Mailsort contract. These levies are collected by separate companies, the Advertising Standards Board of Finance and the Broadcat Advertising Standards Board of Finance, so that the ASA can remain independent of the industry while being funded by it.

History of ad regulation

Advertising codes