Reports this week state that UK mobile advertising spend is forecast (according to eMarketer) to rise by 90% from 2012 -2013, significantly pushing up overall UK digital ad spend figures. In April the Internet Advertising Bureau also released stats about ad spend, showing that online advertising was up £607m from 2011-2012, with mobile driving over half this growth.

This trend also corresponds with the increase in complaints we’ve received about online advertising which, as we highlighted in our Annual Report 2012, now represents 28% of our workload. And we’re only likely to spend more time dealing with these types of complaints, as online retail sales soar.

We recognise the importance of making sure the same protections are provided for consumers online, as they are offline. That’s why we extended our remit in March 2011 to cover advertising on companies' own websites and in other third party space they control, like social networks Facebook and Twitter.

Whilst the internet is a vast sea of information, we’ve been able to demonstrate the real difference we can make delivering protections for consumers online. Importantly, most advertisers don’t want to get it wrong, as maintaining consumer trust is key to their business. But we’ll be continuing to monitor developments in this area – we’ll soon be releasing a statement on the effectiveness of our online remit extension, and publishing the findings of a social media survey we’ve conducted.

Online rulings

Hi Spirits, Facebook - 1 May 2013

Genting Alderney Ltd (Keith Chegwin), Twitter – 9 Jan 2013

Lions Gate UK Ltd, YouTube – 18 Jan 2012

TripAdvisor, website – 1 Feb 2012

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• Online, catch-up TV and radio, in-app and in-game

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