What's the point of an ad regulator that can randomly refuse to review ads?
When a sponsored Typo post advertising Christmas ornaments in the shape of a penis and a sex toy showed up in Collective Shout supporter Susan’s Facebook feed, she made a complaint to Ad Standards.
Typo's penis-shaped Christmas ornaments
But Ad Standards did not consider Susan’s complaint against the unsolicited penis ornament ad. She received an email notifying her that the Chair of the Ad Standards Community Panel had refused to forward the complaint to the panel for review.
The email noted that Susan’s objection did fall within Ad Standards’ scope, but that the Chair had determined it was similar to other cases where content was found not to be in breach of the Code.
We’ve previously highlighted this very weakness in our blog post documenting the many failings of Ad Standards, 34 Reasons Why Ad Industry Self-Regulation is a Disaster. Why have a panel to consider complaints at all if any one person can reject a legitimate complaint prior to review? We note also the double standards at play in Ad Standards pre-emptively rejecting complaints on the basis of similar content being “consistently dismissed” – there is no similar treatment for sexist and porn-themed advertisements where complaints are consistently upheld.
Why shouldn’t this complaint be considered? There are a number of reasons why a woman might object to phallic imagery being forced on her unsolicited. Who benefits from Ad Standards pre-emptively refusing to even consider complaints against this content? This is yet another example of the interests of advertisers being prioritised over the interests of community members – and this is exactly how the system of self-regulation is set up.
With 80+ Playboy porn empire sex store Honey Birdette ads being upheld with no change, no power to enforce and no penalties, ad industry self-regulation is a joke – and everyone knows it.
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