Advertising standards in the UK: what the ASA can do, and what the CAP Code lets you claim

Advertising in the UK is governed by two codes and one body. The Advertising Standards Authority administers the CAP Code for non broadcast advertising, which covers press, outdoor, cinema, direct mail, email, paid online advertising and the marketing you publish on your own website and social accounts, and the BCAP Code for advertising on television and radio. The ASA is not a statutory regulator and it does not issue fines. It investigates complaints, including a single complaint from one member of the public, and publishes its rulings by name. Three rules decide most cases: an advert must not mislead, you must hold the evidence for a claim before the advert is published, and an advert must be obviously identifiable as an advert.

This page covers what the ASA is and is not, how a complaint turns into a published ruling, what the sanctions are, the parts of the codes that affect a marketing team weekly, and the order to work in when the advert is going on air.

What the ASA is, and what sits behind it

The ASA is the independent body that applies the codes. The codes are written by two committees, the Committee of Advertising Practice for non broadcast and the Broadcast Committee of Advertising Practice for television and radio. Funding comes from a levy on advertising spend, collected by separate bodies rather than by the ASA, which keeps rulings at arm's length from the advertisers who pay it.

For non broadcast advertising this is self regulation: the ASA cannot prosecute you or take your money. Broadcast is different. That regulation is contracted out to the ASA by Ofcom, which keeps its statutory powers in reserve, so a broadcaster carrying an advert that breaks the BCAP Code has a licence problem as well as a ruling.

The codes do not reach everything. Editorial content, press releases and political advertising sit outside them, and other bodies hold the law alongside the ASA: the Competition and Markets Authority and local authority Trading Standards services enforce consumer protection legislation, the Financial Conduct Authority governs financial promotions, and medicines, gambling and alcohol carry their own statutory layer. A ruling and a breach of the law are two separate exposures, and the second is the expensive one.

How a complaint becomes a ruling

Anybody can complain, and a complaint costs nothing. A member of the public, a competitor or the ASA itself can start it, and there is no threshold number. One is enough.

• The ASA assesses whether the advert is in its remit and whether the complaint raises a problem under the code.
• Many cases close informally. The advertiser amends or withdraws the advert, gives that assurance, and no ruling is published.
• Where it goes further, the ASA asks you for your evidence. This is the moment the substantiation rule becomes real, because you are given a working deadline, not a research period.
• The ASA Council rules. Upheld, partly upheld or not upheld, published with your company named, the advert described and the reasoning set out.

The ruling is a web page that stays up, carries your name, is indexed and gets quoted back at you by buyers and procurement teams. For most advertisers that is the sanction.

What the ASA can actually do

Sanction	What happens in practice
Published ruling	Your name, the advert and the breach on the ASA website, permanently
Withdrawal	The advert comes down or is changed
Alerts to media owners	Media owners and platforms are told to refuse the advert
Paid search action	The ASA works with search engines to have paid advertising removed, and can place its own notices in paid search naming a persistent offender
Referral	Non broadcast cases to Trading Standards and the CMA under consumer protection law, broadcast cases to Ofcom, where licence conditions apply

The parts of the code a marketing team meets every week

Substantiation, held before publication. The code requires documentary evidence for objective claims, in your hands before the claim goes out. The test is whether you could put the evidence on the table on the day somebody asks. Keep the claim as written, the source, the date, who approved it and the date it needs rechecking.

Misleading by omission. A claim can be true and still break the code if material information is missing or buried. Significant limitations, who qualifies, what the price excludes and when an offer ends belong where the claim is.

Comparisons. A comparative claim has to compare products meeting the same need, has to be verifiable, and has to make its basis clear. Date the data it rests on and diary a recheck, because a comparison that was accurate in March is a misleading claim in November.

Prices. Quoted prices aimed at consumers include VAT and any other non optional charges, and where a price excludes VAT because the audience is business, say so prominently rather than in small print. A savings claim needs a genuine previous selling period behind it, and a "from" price needs enough of the product available at that price for the claim to be honest.

Advertising that has to look like advertising. This is where a large share of rulings land. Influencer and affiliate content is advertising when a brand has paid, gifted or controlled it, so the label goes at the start, visible without expanding anything, in plain words. It applies to free product, to ambassador relationships, to posts by your own founders and staff, and to affiliate links. Put the labelling rule in the contract, name who checks it before posting, and keep a record of what went live.

Testimonials and restricted categories. Hold the original of every testimonial and do not edit a quotation into a stronger claim than the person made. Health, medicines, food, financial services, alcohol, gambling and children's products each carry extra rules, and in food and health the wording itself is restricted to authorised claims, so read that code section in full rather than a summary. The claims discipline in one of the tightest of those categories is worked through in our note on what healthcare advertising may say.

The order to work in, and where clearance sits

For television and radio the order is not optional. A television script is cleared through Clearcast, which acts on behalf of the broadcasters, and radio through Radiocentre, and both happen before you book the airtime. Clearance asks for the same substantiation the ASA would, so the evidence file has to exist at script stage. Advertisers who book first and clear afterwards pay for airtime with no advert to run in it.

Non broadcast advertising has no clearance body, which catches people out the other way. Nobody says yes before publication, so your own evidence file and sign off are the clearance. Build the gate into production: the claim is written, the evidence attached, a named person approves it, and only then does it reach a designer or a media plan.

Questions about the ASA and the CAP Code

Is the ASA a government regulator?

No. It is the independent body that administers the advertising codes, and for non broadcast advertising the system is self regulation funded by a levy. Its broadcast work runs under an arrangement with Ofcom, which holds the statutory powers. People often search for the advertising standards agency, which is the same body under the wrong name: it is the Advertising Standards Authority.

What happens if we ignore a ruling?

The ruling stays published, media owners and platforms are alerted so the advert stops being accepted, paid search can be removed, your name can appear on the ASA's public list of non compliant online advertisers, and the case can go to Trading Standards and the CMA, who hold statutory powers.

Does one complaint really start an investigation?

Yes. The ASA acts on the point raised rather than the number of people raising it, and it can act on its own monitoring with no complaint at all.

Is there a separate code for Scotland?

The CAP and BCAP Codes apply across the United Kingdom, so advertising standards in Scotland are the same codes applied by the same body. Where the law differs between the nations, for example in parts of alcohol and health regulation, that law applies in addition to the code, so a national campaign gets a check on the devolved differences for the categories it touches.

Do we need to label a post we did not pay for?

If you gave the creator product, a commission on sales or any editorial control, it is advertising and it is labelled. A genuinely unpaid review by somebody with no relationship to you is not, which is why the record of what you gave to whom matters: it is the evidence of which posts needed a label.

Who repeats your claims when nobody is reading your advert

The substantiation question has a second life now. When a buyer asks an assistant what your company does, whether it is any good, or how it compares with two competitors, the reply is assembled from your own pages, review sites, directories and press coverage, and it restates your claims in its own words to somebody who never saw the advert. A claim you could not evidence no longer stops at the advert, and a claim you can evidence is the one worth getting repeated. Ask those questions yourself and you find out which of your claims are travelling, and from which page. That is the check AI Knows Us performs: the claim, the assistant that repeated it, and the source it came from.