Ad description
A Google paid-for search ad for the claims management company www.haveihadppi.co.uk, seen on 23 February 2017, stated "Asking 'Have I Got PPI'? - The Deadline is August 2019. www.haveihadppi.co.uk/Reclaim/PPI".
Issue
Stanton Fisher Ltd t/a Have I Got PPI challenged whether the ad misleadingly implied that the ad would link to Stanton Fisher's website www.haveigotppi.com.
Response
Your Money Management Ltd t/a haveihadppi.co.uk said that “Have I got PPI” was a generic search term that was not copyrighted. They believed it was a question that was asked by thousands of customers on a daily basis. They said the ad clearly showed their URL www.haveihadppi.co.uk, while “Have I Got PPI?” only appeared once. They added that when users clicked through to their website it was clearly labelled as their own business.
Assessment
Not upheld
The ASA acknowledged that the ad’s headline claim “Asking ‘Have I Got PPI’?” included the name of the complainant’s website – haveigotppi.com – and that the claim "Have I Got PPI?" also featured prominently in a jingle in the complainant's advertising. However, we considered that those viewing the ad were likely to primarily be consumers who hadn’t previously applied for a PPI check, and accordingly would be unfamiliar with the names of websites for PPI claims. Therefore, we considered that consumers would not readily associate the claim “Have I got PPI” with the website haveigotppi.com and were instead more likely to interpret it to be a generic question. Furthermore, we noted that the advertiser’s URL was clearly visible in the ad and unlikely to have been missed by consumers. For those reasons, we concluded that consumers were unlikely to have expected from the ad that the link would direct them to the website haveigotppi.com, and as such, the ad was unlikely to mislead.
We investigated the ad under CAP Code (Edition 12) rules 3.1 and 3.3 (Misleading advertising), but did not find it in breach.
Action
No further action necessary.
