News
Annual Report for 2007 Released
PRESS RELEASE P
At the 27th Annual General Meeting of the Advertising Standards Authority for Ireland (ASAI) held today, Mr. Edward McCumiskey, B.L., Chairman, in his statement in the Annual Report presented at the meeting, referred to the new demands being placed on advertising self-regulatory organisations to regulate advertising in the electronic media in all of its forms. He equally referred to the very positive recommendations emanating from senior EU officials and Commissioners on the recognition of and cooperation with self-regulatory models by national governments, where the systems in place are effective and can be trusted. The Report contains references to statements from Commissioner Kuneva (responsible for consumer protection) and the recently retired Commissioner Kyprianou (responsible for health matters).
The ASAI resolved 1468 formal complaints in 2007. This resulted in 126 advertisements being found to be in breach of the ASAI Codes by the independent Complaints Committee compared to 147 in 2006. Complaints that advertisements were misleading comprised over half the complaints dealt with in 2007. In relation to the media in which the advertisements appeared, broadcast media (TV and radio combined) again formed the biggest group with nearly 40% of all complaints. The computer/telecommunications sector again represented the largest of the sectoral groups giving rise to 256 complaints. Details are outlined in the Annual Report which can be located on ASAI’s website.
Finally Mr. McCumiskey referred to the Authority’s monitoring exercise which reviewed just 11,400 advertisements in all media during 2007. The overall compliance factor at 98% (with 100% compliance in some areas) was satisfactorily high. The results of the exercise are currently being reviewed and the results of this review will inform the direction of the monitoring exercise for the balance of 2008.
For further information contact:
The ASAI, Frank Goodman, Chief Executive
Orla Twomey, Assistant Chief Executive:
Telephone: 01 660 8766. Fax: 01 660 8113.
The Advertising Standards Authority for Ireland (ASAI) is the self-regulatory body set up by the advertising industry, including advertisers, agencies and media companies, to promote the highest standards of commercial advertising and to enforce the Code of Advertising Standards and the Code of Sales Promotion Practice, full details of which are available on ASAI’s website @ www.asai.ie. Case Reports on adjudications of the independent Complaints Committee of the ASAI are released in periodic Complaints Bulletins during the year and are also posted on the ASAI website.