HomeInsightsAdvertising Standards Authority announces start of pilot on Intermediary and Platform Principles

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In March 2022, the ASA announced a year-long Intermediary and Platform Principles pilot, which will extend the ASA’s role online and explore bringing more accountability and transparency to the ASA’s regulation of paid online ads. The pilot began on 1 June 2022.

Resulting from a collaboration with IAB UK, the pilot revolves around key Principles, which establish broad objectives around awareness-raising, advertiser compliance and ASA enforcement online.

Participating companies, including Adform, Amazon Ads, Google, Index Exchange, Meta, Snap Inc, TikTok, Twitter and Yahoo, have volunteered to provide information to the ASA to demonstrate how they operate in accordance with the Principles. To support this, the ASA has also published a guidance note that is designed to help manage expectations on all sides about how the pilot should operate in practice, in line with better regulation principles.

The ASA says that the initiative is intended to explore how to formalise the way it already works with the world’s largest online players to secure responsible advertising online.

The ASA intends to publish an interim and aggregated account of how the participating companies have given effect to the Principles at the end of 2022. It will highlight examples of best practice and identify areas for improvement for the second half of the pilot. The ASA will publish a final report in quarter three, 2023.

The ASA says that the information gathered through the Pilot should help it, the industry and other stakeholders to collectively consider whether and where further appropriate action could be taken to enhance the ASA’s ability to enforce the CAP Code online. To read the ASA’s announcement in full, click here.