The Advertising Association promotes the role and rights of responsible advertising and its value to people, society, businesses and the economy. We represent UK advertisers, agencies, media owners and tech companies on behalf of the entire industry, acting as the connection between industry professionals and the politicians and policy-makers.

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The Advertising Association focuses on major industry and policy areas that have huge ramifications on UK advertising. This section contains our work around public health, gambling advertising, data and e-privacy, trust, the digital economy and more.

Credos is the advertising industry’s independent think tank. It produces research, evidence and reports into the impact and effectiveness of and public and political response to advertising on behalf of UK advertisers in order to enable the industry to make informed decisions.

Front Foot is our industry’s member network of over 90 businesses across UK advertising. It aims to promote the role of responsible advertising and its value to people, society and the economy through a coalition of senior leaders from advertisers, agencies and media owners.

We run a number of events throughout the year, from our annual LEAD summit to the Media Business Course and regular breakfast briefings for our members. We are also the official UK representative for the world’s biggest festival of creativity – Cannes Lions.

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This Week in Public Affairs: 12 June 2020

/ June 12th 2020 /

This week in Public Affairs has been a particularly collaborative one for the team. We’ve been working with a range of partners and stakeholders to advocate for advertising and media across the UK and Europe. Some of our bigger projects this week included:

European Affairs

The AA is part of a European network known as the Advertising Information Group (AIG), who wrote to MEPs this week to express concern about certain proposals contained within a draft report. The report was being discussed by the Committee on the Internal Market and Consumer Protection (IMCO) and contained several provisions which could be damaging to the advertising and media sectors. AIG, along with several other European trade associations, wrote to suggest several amendments to the report.

Food Advertising

The Food Advertising Working Group met yesterday to discuss the latest developments in the HFSS space. Scrutiny in this area has increased due to COVID-19, but research has consistently shown that utilising advertising to drive positive behavioural change is an effective way of tackling public health issues such as obesity. Such positive advertising initiatives include the ITV & Veg Power’s Eat Them To Defeat Them campaign, which has led to 650,000 more children eating vegetables.

Data and ePrivacy

The Data and ePrivacy working group met on Wednesday to discuss the latest developments in Brexit and data adequacy negotiations. As an extension to the Brexit deadline looks increasingly less likely, the significance of these negotiations has ramped up in intensity, and a substantial amount of preparation from the industry is required in order to be ready for all possible outcomes. The Government has said that it expects to conclude an adequacy process by the end of 2020.