SBC News Age restriction violations on the decline, says ASA

Age restriction violations on the decline, says ASA

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has announced that age restriction violations in UK gambling advertisements have fallen, according to its latest report.

Adverts involving gambling, alcohol, tobacco and other products deemed adult oriented or harmful to children were analysed over a three month period from October to December 2020 using monitoring tools.

Across a sample of 49 websites and 12 YouTube channels, a total of 47 age-restricted advertisements were found to have violated the ASA’s regulations. 

A further 21 advertisers placed age-restricted marketing programmes on eight YouTube channels and 23 websites with a predominately underage viewership.

Of these advertisements, only three were related to gambling, spread across three different websites but published by the same advertising agency. In comparison, advertisements for alcohol, tobacco and weight loss products remained consistent.

“Following our first and second reports, the ASA is encouraged by the lower number of ads found to have broken the rules,” the ASA said in an official statement. 

“Once we have run the monitoring again in Q1 2021, we will in the summer publish a final report, reflecting back on this year-long project and in which we reserve the discretion to publicise repeat offenders, if there are any.”

The revelations build on the ASA’s previous three month report for July to September 2020, which found that the number of age restriction violations by betting advertisers had ‘reduced significantly, from 70 ads in the first sweep to five5 ads in the second sweep’.

Guy Parker, ASA Chief Executive and former Chair of the European Advertising Standards Alliance (EASA), added: “We remain alive to concerns and we will be monitoring and reporting on this again.

“But we’re making significant progress in our ambition to build a culture of zero tolerance for age-restricted ads appearing on websites aimed at children and we expect that progress to continue.”

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