Industry News

ASA announcement on Scam Ad Alert trial

The ASA is announcing the introduction of a UK Scam Ad Alert system in conjunction with the world’s biggest digital advertising and social media platforms, including Facebook and Google. This follows the completion of a successful three month trial of the initiative.

*Online scam ads *

The overwhelming majority of ads responsibly inform and entertain their audience, but a small minority are published with criminal intent. Scam ads have existed for as long as advertising, and it’s unsurprising that as consumers have moved online, so have the scammers. Online fraud is highly sophisticated in nature, and as technology continues to develop so will the complexity of the scams, with some offenders circumventing sophisticated solutions deployed by online platforms to detect and disrupt scams. Such ads are criminal in nature, and tackling them is a complex global problem, requiring a multi-stakeholder response involving law-enforcement bodies and statutory regulators, platforms and all involved in the online ad industry, and national advertising regulatory bodies such as the ASA.

The Scam Ad Alert trial responded to ongoing concerns about online paid-for ads linking to fraudulent content, particularly crypto investment, such as Bitcoin, scams. In 2019 the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and Action Fraud warned that victims of crypto and forex investment scams had lost over £27 million in total in 2018/19. Many scam ads of this type use false stories or doctored images of celebrities, and misleadingly imply those celebrities have endorsed the service. The ASA receives a small but steady stream of complaints about such ads. Online scam ads and the sites they lead to are the cause of significant financial harm to some consumers, as well as damaging to the reputation of the online ad industry as a whole.

*Existing industry and regulatory actions *

Digital advertising and social media platforms already employ sophisticated systems to stop many scam ads appearing in the first place, and to remove them when they do appear. And many platforms include tools for consumers to report problem ads. The FCA and Action Fraud have been working hard to raise consumer awareness of online scam ads of this type. The ASA’s Scam Ad Alert system seeks to complement and enhance those existing actions, in particular by facilitating cross-ad platform intelligence and, potentially in the future, cross-regulator intelligence sharing.

The ASA and CAP system has a strong track record of working in partnership with the ad industry to tackle problem ads in this way. CAP has for many years issued Ad Alerts to media owners to warn them of particularly problematic advertisers in print media and direct marketing. The ASA’s five-year strategy sets out an ambition for us to have even more impact online by working ever closer and more effectively with large online platforms to protect people from irresponsible ads, and this initiative is an example of that in action.

*The trial *

With the support of the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB UK), the industry body for digital advertising, the ASA partnered with major online platforms, including Facebook

and Google, to run a trial of a Scam Ad Alert system. The pilot of the system ran from January 2020 for three months and aimed to quickly alert platforms and, where relevant, publishers to paid-for scam ads online. It built on existing measures where the ASA alerted the platform on which the ad was seen and sought its removal.

Where the ASA was alerted to a scam ad appearing in paid-for space online it promptly sent an alert to all participating platforms with key details of the scam ad, as well as to publishers when the ad appeared on a publisher owned site. The alerts enabled platforms to remove the offending ad and suspend the advertiser's account. Some were also able to add accounts and domains associated with these ads to blocklists, even when the ads weren’t appearing on that platform, stopping them from appearing in future.

A total of 23 Scam Ad Alerts were sent during the trial and the ASA saw platforms on which the ads appeared acting swiftly to remove them in response, with other platforms engaging with and making use of the intelligence to remove other ads and take action against advertisers.

*Next steps *

Building on the success seen in the trial, the ASA intends to move the Scam Ad Alert system on to a more permanent footing and to scale it in a controlled manner. As part of this we are launching a quick reporting form for paid-for scam ads so that members of the public can easily draw our attention to scam ads of this type and we can act promptly together with digital advertising and social media platforms to secure their removal.

We will also be exploring with other regulators how the Scam Ad Alert system can play a part in ensuring a more joined up approach to this issue, for example by the ASA sharing intelligence on such ads with other regulators and vice-versa, potentially on a cross-border basis. Our hope is that such cooperation should minimise multi-regulator demands on participating platforms, helping them to further improve scam ad detection and removal rates and, ultimately, strengthen consumer protection and consumer confidence in online advertising.

Related Articles:

PPA Festival: agenda highlights

There are only five weeks to go until the PPA Festival, where over 70 industry experts will take to our four stages to inspire, inform, and elevate your understanding.

PPA Member Login

If you have a member login, enter your details below. Please note, that your login is for PPA.co.uk only and not for our event sites.

If you are a member but don’t have an account yet, you can setup your account here.

Any problems, please contact membership@ppa.co.uk.