Who: The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA)
Where: United Kingdom
When: 30 January 2025
Law stated as at: 14 March 2025
What happened:
Following the December 2024 report published by the ASA which looked at the online supply pathway of ads for age-restricted ads, the ASA has been looking into the findings and has set out some top tips for age-restricted ad marketers.
The ASA’s December report showed that the industry is generally working well to limit children’s exposure to age-restricted ads, but that some were still being mistargeted. While only a very small percentage of such ads were mistargeted towards a child (0.06%) or to a neutral avatar created by the ASA for the purposes of the study (0.16% overall), often this mistargeting occurred due to the mis-categorisation of the ads.
The ASA’s top tips for marketers of age-restricted ads, such as those for alcohol and gambling, include:
- Marketers and other third parties should correctly categorise their ads to demonstrate the age-restricted nature.
- Marketers and other third parties should have and continually update a blocklist by periodically monitoring sites disproportionately popular with children.
- The content of sites and channels should be assessed to determine whether any particular site or channel is an appropriate place for an age-restricted ad.
- Channels and websites should also actively monitor their audience profiles on an ongoing basis, making sure they categorise themselves as “Made for Kids” or similar, having child-directed content or equivalent, if data shows their sites regularly attract a disproportionate amount of under 18s.
Taking these steps will help to ensure that the number of age-restricted ads shown to children continues to be as limited as possible. They will also help to promote ongoing monitoring by marketers, channels and websites so that practices can be updated as audiences change.
Why this matters:
With concern over the material and content that children are exposed to online increasing, it is important for marketers, channels and websites to ensure that children are not on the receiving end of ads that are not intended for their viewing. The ASA’s tips encourage these entities to correctly categorise the ads themselves to avoid them being shown to an under 18 audience, and recommend the continual monitoring of audiences and viewings so that if a marketer finds that the audience viewing its ads is increasingly getting younger, relevant disclosures and practices can be updated to respond to that.
This continues to be a prevalent topic for the ASA, so it is important that marketers are able to demonstrate that they are doing what they can to reduce any possible risk to children.
