Ad description
An ad for general interest website History All Day, in a content discovery network, that appeared on Mumsnet’s website on 10 February 2023, on The Guardian’s website on 11 February 2023 and in the Vinted app on 11 February 2023, featured an image of a baby. Text accompanying the image stated “40 Beautiful Genetics Photos”.
Issue
Five complainants challenged whether the use of the child’s image, in the context of an ad designed to drive traffic to a general interest website, was offensive.
Response
Decido LLC t/a History All Day said that they were in the process of removing the image from their servers, ensuring that it would not be used again in the future, and had initiated an internal review of their advertising compliance procedures.
Mumsnet said they were first alerted about the ad being displayed on their forum on the 10 February 2023 and immediately blocked it across their websites and apps. They informed The Media Trust, an online and digital safeguarding platform for advertisers and businesses, about the ad on the 11 February who then blocked it that same day. They provided a graph that showed the number of impressions the ad had generated prior to those actions. The graph showed that after the blocks had been initiated the number of impressions fell to zero. Furthermore, they provided a link to a thread on their website where they had engaged with their users to explain how the ad had been served and the action they were taking.
The Guardian said they had received 11 complaints about the ad between the 11 and 12 February 2023. The complaints were investigated, and on the 14 February they took action to block the ad. They explained that their processes to prevent potentially harmful ads from being published had been circumvented as the advertiser had given the ad a categorisation and label that was permitted by The Guardian’s regulations and standards. They detailed how their advertising publishing standards worked, and explained that their regulations stipulated ads had to be legal, decent, honest, and truthful, and not contrary to the CAP Code. They confirmed that their Readers Editor, their independent ombudsman for reader complaints, had not directly received any complaints about the ad.
Vinted said they had received a complaint about the ad on the 11 February 2023, and on the 13 February they had blocked it.
Google UK Ltd said Google Ireland confirmed the ad had been served through the Google Ads platform, which was a self-administered system. Under their terms and conditions, responsibility for following the applicable regulations and guidance, including the CAP code, lay with the advertiser.
Assessment
Upheld
The ad featured an image of a newly born baby with visible facial differences associated with holoprosencephaly and was captioned “40 Beautiful Genetics Photos”. The ad linked to an article, which contained a list of images and explanations of a variety of different genetic conditions, and the image of the child shown in the ad was not included among the images shown in the article.
We considered the image bore no relevance to the content of the article, and had been used solely to drive traffic towards the website and the advertised article. We therefore considered the ad had the effect of objectifying the child shown and concluded that it was likely to cause serious offence.
The ad breached CAP Code (Edition 12) rule 4.1 (Harm and offence).
Action
The ad must not appear again in the form complained of. We told Decido LLC t/a History All Day not to use similar images of children in a way that was likely to cause serious or widespread offence.
