The internet has become the essential wild-west of advertising, with major social media platforms struggling to keep up with untagged or mistagged adverts and an influx of misleading or factually incorrect adverts cropping up all over the place.
A sad and worrying thought is that social media and internet adverts are not going anywhere. The fact that the major internet giants, Meta, Google, Microsoft, etc, are still trying to get a grasp of them is concerning, or do they simply not care about advertising standards?
I assume the latter, let me explain why and how, as marketers, we can do our bit to fix the problems.
Removing only when their wrist is slapped
One of the most telling signs of bad advertising etiquette on the internet is that things are only removed when the advertising platform (i.e. social media) gets a slap on the wrist. This is evident because of the influx of bad advertising still on the platform, although I do agree that it is hard for these goliaths of organisations to keep track, that have misleading or incorrect information is staggering.
I am confident that advertising is removed when it is highlighted, but after trying to get a few incorrect adverts removed myself and seeing the struggles of others, I don’t think they are as proactive as they could be.
Example: Swytch Bike. An immediately misleading advertising campaign about creating an electric bike using “one simple change”
The company claims that by adding their special device to your handlebar, you’ll get an electric bike. Sounds too easy? Because it is. Delving into this, it also turns out you need to swap out your front wheel and sort out all of the new wires that come with the bike.
Although this is a pretty basic example, it is important to set the standard so it is not repeated without consequence.
This brings us to advertising for mobile games, which seem to be unregulated completely and get away with almost anything on major platforms. Like, Gardenscapes and Homescapes, who for years have run advertising that wasn’t anything to do with their games. Only removed when the ASA actually investigated them – something that would have happened much sooner.
How can we make it better in the future?
The problem we have here is twofold, part of the blame lies with the Marketers, and the other half lies with the regulators, the Advertising Standards Agency.
Modernise Advertising Watchdogs
I’ll start with the ASA connection, as this is pretty simple, like many government organisations they are slow to react. Even though digital advertising is a major part of modern life, they still focus mainly on terrestrial TV. Their guidance and systems aren’t aligned with the modern world, meaning those advertising on social media platforms – which are global – aren’t sure of specific country rules.
A modern world, needs a modern advertising standards body, something that works globally and is quicker to react with easier rules. As content creators become younger and the audiences become larger, dusty and archaic advertising isn’t worthwhile.
Responsibility needs to be shared
Modern marketing is done across many people, with someone on the coal face and then a couple of managers. All of these people have some part to play in advert creation and sign-off. All of these need to have some form of responsibility in understanding the laws surrounding advertising in varying countries.
But Marketing needs to be much more assertive in its understanding of advertising standards and forcing the hand of the powers that be. Only then can we look at correcting the issues of advertising and reducing/removing the amount of poor advertising.
Setting a standard is better than removing or reducing it and one bad advert reduces the trust in the Marketing profession as a whole.
This will help but we need to be better as consumers
These are suggestions to improve internet advertising but as consumers we need to be better at finding and highlighting adverts that break guidelines. Instead of just sighing and moving on.