News
Websites of spirits producers 93% compliant with advertising rules
Websites of spirits producers 93% compliant with advertising rules
A pilot compliance monitoring project, coordinated by the European Advertising Standards Alliance (EASA), looked at online ads for alcoholic beverages as well as websites of spirits producers in thirteen European countries.
Results showed a 93% compliance rate for the 368 marketer-owned websites reviewed by self-regulatory organisations over the summer of 2009. No breaches of the codes were found for the pop-ups and banners promoting alcoholic beverages examined over the same period. The levels of compliance and problematic issues flagged were similar to those found in traditional media in previous compliance monitoring exercises conducted by EASA.
Jack Law from Alcohol Focus Scotland and independent reviewer of the 2009 monitoring report, made public today, underlined in the report that the similarities between the outcomes of previous monitoring exercises which focused on other media platforms and the outcomes of this exercise suggests that the issue is not with the medium used.
“Based on the results of this exercise, we can dismiss the belief that advertisers relax their standards when it comes to advertising on the Internet”, highlighted Albert Recasens, Director General of CONFIANZA ONLINE and the second independent reviewer of the report.
The monitoring exercise was commissioned by the European Forum for Responsible Drinking and focused entirely on digital marketing communications following the recent adoption of the EASA Digital Marketing Communications Best Practice by its member self-regulatory bodies.
“Whereas the internet is often seen as the Wild West with very limited regulation, the advertisers are applying the same standards of self-regulation as they do in other media”, said third independent reviewer Arnaud Houdmont from Generation Europe, which operates a two-way communication platform enabling exchanges of views between young people, the private and public sectors.
Advertising self-regulatory organisations in thirteen countries were selected to participate in the review: Belgium, Czech Republic, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Ireland, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and the UK.
---Ends---
The full report can be downloaded on the EASA website: www.easa-alliance.org
For further information on EASA:
Ms Renée Brautigam, EASA Promotion & Communications Officer
+32 2 513 78 06
communications@easa-alliance.org www.easa-alliance.org
Notes to editors
The European Advertising Standards Alliance (EASA) is a non-profit organisation based in Brussels and is the single voice of advertising self-regulation in Europe. It acts as the European coordination point for advertising self-regulatory bodies and systems across Europe. EASA brings together 33 advertising self-regulatory organisations (26 from 24 European countries as well as advertising self-regulatory organisations in Australia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, India, New Zealand and South Africa) and 16 organisations representing the advertising industry (advertisers, agencies and the media) both globally and in Europe.
The EASA Digital Marketing Communications Best Practice, which was released in October 2008, provides initial best practice guidance to national self-regulatory bodies and advertising industry representatives by defining what a digital marketing communication is and what kind of digital marketing communications would fall within the remit of self-regulatory organisations.
An advertising self-regulatory organisation is set up by the advertising industry to ensure that advertising in that country adheres to the agreed upon advertising code, which always stipulates that advertising should be legal, decent, honest and truthful. By doing so it provides an additional layer of consumer protection and helps ensure consumer trust in advertising. This in turn will help assure advertisers of a more sustained return on their advertising investment.
Reasons why independent reviewers were used in the report
For reasons of impartiality and due process, independent reviewers, knowledgeable in both digital media, youth and consumer protection issues, were appointed to verify, amongst others, whether the appropriate criteria were used and the correct process was followed. They also validated that the EASA report was put together based on the monitoring results and testified to the correctness of the monitoring procedure and the scoreboard.