A continuing commitment to responsible advertising: The ASA & CAP 2024 annual report

The Advertising Standards Authority (“ASA”) and the Committees of Advertising Practice (“CAP”) have published their 2024 Annual Report. The 2024 Report demonstrates the ASA’s increasingly proactive approach,  highlighting a renewed focus on the use of AI for ad monitoring and a strong emphasis on protecting vulnerable groups.

Advertisers should take note of the ASA’s focus on responsible ad content—especially in the context of environmental claims, medicines, financial products, and content targeted at or likely to be viewed by children Itis clear that the ASA strives to remain nimble, leveraging AI for more effective monitoring and enforcement. For advertisers, this means higher scrutiny—not only from complaints issued by the public, but also from the ASA’s direct and proactive identification of potentially problematic ads. Overall, the Report offers advertisers and consumers alike a clear commitment to transparency, responsibility, and trust-building in UK advertising well into 2025. Advertisers should, therefore, ensure they keep abreast of updates to the Advetising Codes set by the CAP and take advantage of the advice and training resources that the ASA system provides to help businesses ensure their ads are compliant.

In 2023, 33,903 ads were amended or withdrawn following ASA and CAP intervention. Further, CAP delivered over 777,000 pieces of advice and training to businesses on the advertising rules in 2024.

We set out key points from the report below.

Key developments in 2024

Expansion of AI-led ad monitoring

The ASA has focused in particular on improving its “Active Ad Monitoring” system, which processed approximately 28 million ads in 2024—ten times more than the previous year. The enhanced system, relying on LLMs to analyse content, enables the ASA to detect potentially non-compliant ads swiftly and at scale. This broadened capacity has assisted with targeting several priority areas, such as identifying misleading environmental claims and monitoring influencer marketing, financial advertising, prescription-only medicines and e-cigarettes, among others.

Tackling misleading green claims

Environment and climate change-related advertising remains a core priority for the ASA. The report says that the ASA has seen positive engagement by businesses, and that advertisers are becoming cautious in making environmental claims. Although overall compliance is improving, the ASA continues to collaborate with other regulators, such as the Competition and Markets Authority and relevant government departments, to develop further industry-specific guidance for businesses and to clarify standards, particularly in the transport and energy sectors.

Protecting children online

The ASA remains focused on ensuring the protection of children and young people online. Through its ‘Tech4Good’ programme, it monitored tens of thousands of ads across websites and YouTube channels popular with under-18s, finding that only around 0.16% were mistargeted at children, and 0.06% served to a child avatar. While these figures are low, the ASA notes there remains room for improvement in blocklisting (i.e. the use of keywords and filters to prevent ads from appearing on platforms, or being associated with content, that might be considered undesirable or offensive) children’s content and ensuring accurate ad categorisation to limit underage exposure to gambling, e-cigarette, or high fat salt or sugar food-related ads. Proactive monitoring also turned up non-compliant social media advertising for vaping products, [prompting further enforcement to stop brands and retailers from publishing problematic advertising on social media, including organic ads, paid ads, and influencer posts. Increased efforts are also being made to shut down social media accounts where advertisers appear unwilling or unable to comply with the rules.

Safeguarding vulnerable consumers

In 2024, the ASA focused on protecting vulnerable consumers by investigating health-related advertising claims, including by ruling against a range of supplement ads that claimed to treat conditions including anxiety, ADHD, and autism. The ASA’s proactive investigations in 2024 also addressed problematic financial ads that encouraged consumers to take on unmanageable debt. The ASA has confirmed that further monitoring will continue in these areas to mitigate any exploitative or misleading advertising practices.

An evolving regulatory framework

A key highlight is the ASA’s progress in embedding its Intermediary and Platform Principles (“IPPs”)—a pilot framework launched with major online players such as Amazon Ads, Google, Meta, TikTok, X (formerly Twitter), and others. Participating platforms commit to certain measures, including using their terms and conditions to encourage compliance, swiftly removing persistently non-compliant ads, and sharing relevant information with the ASA’s teams.

2025 and beyond 

The ASA’s priorities for 2025 include continued investment in AI-led monitoring and targeted enforcement in high-risk areas. The regulator intends to publish new research into youth media habits with a view to considering whether a stricter approach should be taken to applying the gambling advertising rules, and new results from the ‘Tech4Good’ project which consider the online supply pathway of in-app ads that objectify women. Looking ahead, the ASA intends to formalise the IPPs principles and recruit more companies and platforms, reflecting their ambition to create a global online regulatory framework based on a set of principles that advertising platforms and companies agree to be bound by.