ASA is the advertisement regulator in the UK and it stands for Advertising Standards Authority. The main goal of this organisation is to control the advertisement according to the Advertising Codes. These codes are created by the Committee of Advertising Practice(CAP). The CAP is part of the ASA authority.
The CAP and ASA work together to regulate transparent, consistent, accountable, targeted, and proportionate advertisements. It is an independent organization without Government interference and comes at no cost to the taxpayer.
The UKGC, ASA, and CAP have partnered in 2018 with an aim to reorganize the rules for sports advertisement including sports sponsorships. It has stated that standalone casinos must ensure that advertisements catering to the subject must reach the right audience only. The operators were told to make sure that they do not allow logos on other promotions for appearing on commercial merchandising popular among children.
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The Key ASA Duties
ASA deals with complaints and concerns from the customers and organizations and takes necessary action to ban ads that are offensive, harmful, misleading, and irresponsible in nature. Its task is to monitor advertisements to check whether they are obeying the rules or not. Conducting research to have an idea about public opinion and protecting consumers is also their task.
ASA has been the administrator of the non-broadcast Advertising Codes And broadcasting codes for more than 50 years and 10 years respectively. The remit of ASA was extended in 2011 for including claims raised by companies on their official websites, social media handles to sort out the issue.
ASA catered and solved 34,717 advertising complaints related to around 25,000 advertisements and 4469 compliance cases were solved upon their own initiative as well. Due to their efforts, 8881 cases were either entirely removed or edited to meet the standards.
70% of the 97% of people had complained about potentially misleading advertisements and were from the members of the public. It has partnered with UKGC to promote healthy responsible gambling and keep the children away from it. Together, they aim at benefiting society as a whole in order to curb down gambling addictions of any kind.
How Does ASA Help UKGC?
ASA has been a part of the advertising monitory sweep for since long. Advertising authorities plan to expand their resources in the identification and screening of online advertisements related to gambling, alcohol, tobacco, e-cigarettes, etc.
The advertisers in the UK have placed age-restrictive advertisements online to target their ads away from underage audiences which is helping to reduce down problem gambling among UK punters thus leading to lesser numbers of people requiring Gamstop’s help. In a breakdown of gambling content, 70 betting advertisements from four gambling operators had appeared across eight websites.
The Chief Executive of ASA had said that the technology used by ASA monitors online advertisements related to gambling to build up a no-gambling culture among children. Ads were made age-restricted for the same.
The UKGC had participated in an open discussion with the industry in order to implement the newer set of rules. The old rule emphasized giving the operators a minimum of 72 hrs to wrap up the age verification process and allow the punters to bet during the same time.
The new rule states that verification of the identity of a punter should be done before depositing any funds or gambling including free bets. The changes are valid since the anti-gambling campaigns have emphasized a strict identity verification process for helping the problem gamblers.
Conclusion
The online casino industry has been growing tremendously due to technological advancements. The UKGC has shown some major confidence in expanding the iGaming sector to modernize older regulations that were needed to be aligned with the current gambling market.
Due to these new rules, the barriers, consumer drop-offs cause a decline in the share prices of big players. The largest operators suffer the most because they settle by paying a substantial sum of money and would lose their overall value due to the action taken by the UKGC.
UKGC had stated that gambling websites must never display free accessible advertisements featuring images that can appeal to the younger generation. Problem gamblers must not be targeted in any kind. Firms willing to operate in the UK must go through the current ASA’s advice on gambling and betting.
