The ASA has today published its Online Advertising Survey 2012 which reveals that 95% of advertising on the websites it monitored stuck to the rules.

Following the extension of the ASA’s online remit in 2011 to cover advertising claims on companies’ own websites, we checked 120 websites of small, medium and large businesses across a wide range of sectors to identify potential problems under the Advertising Code.

The Advertising Code was extended so that companies making claims about their products and services on their own websites have to follow the same strict rules that apply across all other media. This means we can better trust the online ads we see and hear. It also means where people think something is misleading, harmful or offensive, they can lodge a complaint and we can look into it for them.

In summary, the Compliance team found that:

• Companies’ own website advertising is, by and large, sticking to the rules
• 95% of websites and 97.8% of web pages did not contain any obvious breach of the rules
• Problems we picked up on included the misleading omission of mandatory charges / taxes and misleading claims for moisturisers

The findings of the survey suggest that obvious breaches of the Advertising Code are rare. While encouraging, our day-to-day experience of regulating website advertising suggests that problem ads are more commonplace than the survey suggests.

For example, we have been dealing with a significant number of complaints about the health and beauty sector, particularly in relation to ads produced by complementary and alternative medicine practitioners. Our survey, on the other hand, was an unbiased sweep looking at websites of different sized companies across a range of sectors.

We’re taking action to address the problems we identified. For instance, we will be conducting further compliance work around non-inclusive pricing. We also contacted the website owners where we picked up on problems and obtained assurances that they would bring their advertising claims in line with the Code.

Read the ASA Online Advertising Survey 2012

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