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.

Review of HFSS advertising restrictions on TfL

Additional Workstream Media Resource Public Health

The Advertising Association, ISBA and Outsmart have published a review by SLG Economics of research studies by PLOS Medicine and the International Journal of Behavioural Nutrition and Physical Activity on the effectiveness of the ban on HFSS advertising on the TfL estate in 2019.

The PLOS study reports that the ban led to a 1000 calorie reduction per week in the energy intake of the average weekly household in London.

But SLG Economics believes this over-estimates the effect of the ban and that numerous questions and concerns mean that the study should not, on its own, be relied on to support policies to ban HFSS ads.

This report has been updated as of September 14 2022 to include a review of the second study.

Download the review of the TfL study