Who: The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA)
Where: United Kingdom
When: 20 March 2025
Law stated as at: 16 April 2025
What happened:
Following a trend of ASA upheld rulings, the regulator set out to identify in-app ads which harmfully objectify women, focussing on adds in gaming apps. The ASA worked with a cyber-safety consultancy to identify the advertisers, publishers and ad supply intermediaries that had a role in the online distribution of the ads in question. This work resulted in a report examining the online supply pathway of in-game ads that harmfully objectify women. The ASA position on nudity, sexualisation and objectification in ads for mobile gaming and a summary of relevant rulings is also detailed in the Committee of Advertising Practice (CAP) AdviceOnline article on Entertainment: Mobile/app games.
The ASA found that the vast majority (99.86%) of ads monitored did not contain content that depicted women in an objectifying or irresponsible way. However, it did also identify eight ads that were not compliant. Given the egregious content of these ads, which come unbidden into people’s lives, and the ads’ potential to cause serious offence and harm, particularly to women and girls, the ASA said that it takes a zero-tolerance approach to such ads and expects all parties involved in the ad supply pathway to take steps to stop them from appearing.
The ASA’s findings also suggest that ads for romance story apps or artificial intelligence (AI) chat apps which allow for sexual content, available on popular app stores, may, in reflecting the sexual nature of the apps, be at particular risk of breaching the rules around offence and harm.
The study also found that nearly all of the non-compliant ads were served to profiles with a registered age of under 16, despite most of them being for apps with ratings which meant that they were not suitable for this age group (although the data set was very small). Also, in some cases the content of the ad had been misclassified during the ad quality processes, resulting in the ad being served when it should not have been. Furthermore, knowledge of the UK advertising standards appeared to be variable, which may have contributed to some of the ads appearing.
Following the study, CAP has re-published its guidance for in-app ads. The ASA will now look to build on the positive engagement with the mobile gaming app industry and encourages intermediaries and publishers to consider whether there are additional steps they could take to detect and remove non-compliant ads from their platforms and apps.
Why this matters:
The ASA flagged that the UK Code of Non-broadcast Advertising, Sales Promotion and Direct Marketing (CAP Code) holds advertisers responsible for ensuring that ads they create do not breach the rules by causing harm, but made it clear that other parties involved in the online pathway supply of ads also play a vital part in protecting people by spotting ads that are inappropriate.
