Background
Simmary of Council decision:
Two issues were investigated, both of which were Upheld.
Ad description
A video ad for Dramawave, a streaming platform, seen on the Vinted app on 16 November 2025. The ad showed a man and a woman engaged in different sexual acts. The woman was also shown with blood splattered across her face. Text on the screen throughout stated, “My girlfriend is having an affair with my father”. Further text on the screen included. “You wear thongs to church now”, “treated by a proper husband”, “A lil [sic] preview for you” and “I’ll make you happy”.
Issue
The complainant, who believed the ad contained sexually explicit images, challenged whether it was:
- offensive and irresponsible; and
- irresponsibly targeted.
Response
1. & 2. Skywork AI Pte Ltd t/a Dramawave said that the ad in question may have been published inadvertently due to a reviewing oversight. They stated that they had promptly withdrawn the ad and had put in place actions to ensure the ad was no longer accessible to the public.
They acknowledged full responsibility for such an oversight. To prevent any future recurrence, they had implemented additional controls, including enhanced pre-publication review for UK-facing materials, a stricter escalation and sign-off process for sensitive content, and internal guidance and training for relevant teams on ensuring compliance with the CAP Code.
They said that they took the matter very seriously and would comply with their duty to ensure that their marketing communications did not contain anything that was likely to cause serious or widespread offence, or anything that was likely to condone or encourage violence.
Vinted Platform Ltd (Vinted) said, once the ad was reported to them, they immediately took steps to block such ads and escalated the case to the ad management platform. The platform had informed Vinted that a technical issue had allowed the ad to circumvent their system and be served before it was flagged and blocked.
Vinted said they had a strict policy for ads served on their platform to ensure that their users were not exposed to any harmful or inappropriate ads.
Assessment
1. & 2. Upheld
The CAP Code stated that marketing communications must be prepared with a sense of responsibility to consumers and to society, and must not contain anything that was likely to cause serious or widespread offence.
The ad appeared on the Vinted app, an online marketplace, which we considered was likely to have appeal to a broad and general audience. It promoted the video streaming platform app Dramawave, available on Google Play.
Stills from the ad showed a man and a woman engaged in sexual activity. We understood that some viewers would recognise the scenes shown in the ad as clips from a show available to stream on the advertised app. However, we considered the scenes reproduced in the ad were sexually explicit in nature, portraying a man and woman engaged in various intimate sexual positions. The man was also shown holding the woman’s underwear close to her face, alongside the text “You wear thongs to church now”, which we considered reinforced the sexual tone of the ad. We considered that the audience of the Vinted app would not expect to see ads featuring sexually explicit content in that context, but that, in any case, the content would not have been acceptable in any context.
The woman was also shown with blood splattered on her face at several points in the ad. Whilst the origin of the blood was not clear, we considered that the presence of blood might been seen by some as suggesting sexual violence.
For the reasons outlined, we concluded the ad was likely to cause both serious and widespread offence, and had been irresponsibly targeted, because it was not suitable to be published in any app.
The ad breached CAP Code (Edition 12) rules 1.3 (Social responsibility) and 4.1 (Harm and offence).
Action
The ad must not appear again in the form complained of. We told Skywork AI Pte Ltd t/a Dramawave to ensure future ads were prepared responsibly and did not cause serious or widespread offence, including through sexually explicit content and content that may suggest sexual violence.
