ASA (advertising standards authority)

General information on the ASA (regulations)

The ASA are regulators of advertising across all Medias e.g. Leaflets,
Magazines and TV adverts. The ASAs work includes:
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Acting on complaints from viewers.

Proactively checking the media to take action upon misleading
advertising.
Harmful or offensive advertisement.

Purpose/ strategy
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To make all UK ads responsible.

Performance
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Standards of services
Read annual report and statements

About regulation
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UK advertising regulation operates independently

Acting on complaints
Each year the ASA consider over 30,000 complaints about around
20,000 ads.

Funding
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The ASA receives no governmental funding, meaning the ASAs work

is free to the tax payer.
Funded by advertisers

Work with others

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The ASA often works with other regulators and external experts
(helping with technical issues).

History
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Commercial TV started broadcasting in 1955, the advertisements

were controlled by legislation.
In 1988, the introduction of the Control of Misleading
Advertisements Regulations provided the ASA with legal backing
from the Office of Fair Trading (OFT).

Ofcom
Ofcom is the communications regulator in the UK. Ofcom regulate the TV
and radio sectors, Mobiles, telecoms, postal services, also the airwaves
which wireless devices operate.
Ofcom make sure people in the UK are getting the best communication
service they can get.
Ofcom is funded by fees from industry for regulating broadcasting and
communications networks, this is in a grant-in-aid from the Government.

Audience information
How do advertisers know who their target audience are?
Advertisers know who their target audience are because they do market
research to identify the age rage interest for each product. This also helps
them identify a market gap.
Different ways of doing market research:
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Secondary research

Information that is already found, this can be found in magazines,

newspapers, websites and all other different kinds of media.
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Primary research

This is research that you have to find out, for example hand out
questionnaires/ surveys to the member of public.
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Focus groups

This is where a group of people meet up discussing the same interests.

They all discuss about a certain topic; this means the people that
participate get to gain information (or more information they didnt know).
They also get to interact with each other.
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Questionnaires

Write out questions and hand them out for people to fill in to gather
information from other peoples perspectives.