Digital Charter: Making the UK the best and safest place for digital advertising

Here at the Advertising Association we share the Government’s ambition to make the UK the best and safest place for online advertising and are dedicated to working towards making this reality. We want the UK to represent a gold standard in digital for others to admire, follow and emulate.

Digital advertising is a vibrant and successful sector delivering brand value and powering a significant proportion of the UK’s digital and creative economy. In 2016, digital adspend at £10.3 billion accounted for half of total adspend, and the UK’s digital advertising economy is larger than its German and French counterparts combined.

Self-regulation is a crucial element in the UK’s leadership in digital advertising. The ASA system covers all digital advertising and marketing and serves as a blueprint for successful advertising regulation in many markets around the world. The industry is committed to maintaining an effective self-regulatory system and is currently in discussions to ensure its sustainable funding.

We see the following four areas as having the potential to undermine consumer and business trust in digital advertising and therefore areas which need our attention in the coming months:

1. Advertising fraud: where there is a need to ensure appropriate law enforcement action is taken against criminals who abuse the digital advertising ecosystem for financial gain.

2. Advertising misplacement: where there is a need to protect consumers by ensuring that ads do not incentivise the production or dissemination of harmful or extremist content.

3. Ad blocking: where there is an existential threat to online content and businesses, and a consequent need to ensure consumers have a positive experience online whilst safeguarding the ability of online publishers to monetise their content through advertising.

4. Data privacy: where there is a need to ensure that UK citizens enjoy high levels of protection, subject to robust freedom of expression and freedom of information exemptions, whilst also ensuring that data flows freely to and from the UK so that it remains a world-leading centre.

Want to know more about any of these areas? Read our Digital Charter proposal in full here.