Welcome

When you hear the term new media, you probably think of the World Wide Web or e-mails. New media also embraces many other communication technologies including mobile phones, handheld computers (also known as Personal Digital Assistants or PDAs), electronic kiosks, electronic posters and computer games. All these methods of electronic communication can carry advertisements.
 
The Advertising Standards Authority's responsbilities include ensuring that non-broadcast advertisements, sales promotions and direct marketing in new media meet the British Code of Advertising, Sales Promotion and Direct Marketing (the Code). These rules state that all marketing communications should be legal, decent, honest and truthful regardless of whether they appear in traditional media, such as a newspaper or a magazine, or in new media, such as an SMS text message or banner ad.
 
The Code administered by the ASA is flexible and adaptable; this flexibility makes it applicable to new media as they emerge. Not all types of commercial communication in new media are covered by the Code, however. Claims companies make on their own websites, for example, do not fall within the scope of the Code. This is because the ASA does not rule on the editorial content of publications, except where space has been paid for to promote a product, service or cause. This stance by the ASA also recognises a distinction between media that consumers have chosen to access and material that they have not purposefully sought out to view.
 
This Guided Tour will tell you about the types of new media advertisements the ASA looks into and what you can do if you see an advertisement that you think is not right.

Read the latest ASA research on new media.

Read the Live Issue on Interactive TV