A series of government-funded ‘Levelling up’ adverts have been banned by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA), following complaints from Labour MPs that they were not obviously identifiable as commercial content.
Seven online newspaper advertorials for the Department of Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC) have come under fire for not making it clear that they contained paid promotional text, rather than independent reporting.
Labour MPs Lisa Nandy and Alex Norris complained to the ASA that the content was not obviously identifiable as an advertorial.
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The advertorials featured the headline ‘Levelling Up! What is it and what does it mean for …… ?’ and included a grey box with the word ‘advertorial’ in block capitals and an infographic including the HM Government logo. They also carried the byline: ‘By Millie Reeves Commercial Writer’.
The DLUHC said the labelling was in the house style of news publisher Reach, asserting that publishers were responsible for ensuring their content followed the appropriate guidelines.
Reach initially said the ‘advertorial’ label travelled down the page as the reader scrolled but later confirmed this was not in place at the time of the campaign. It also added that readers would have seen the advertorials via a Facebook or Google ad or the newspaper’s homepage, all paths clearly labelled as marketing communications.
However, the ASA noted that while the adverts were labelled, the statements did not reference the DLUHC and it was not clear that the following article would also be an ad.
The ASA also said the ‘advertorial’ sign on the homepage was small and likely to be overlooked by readers who would also interpret the byline ‘Millie Reeves Commercial Writer’ to mean that the article was a piece of editorial content.
The ASA said: “We therefore concluded that the ads were not obviously identifiable as marketing communications.
“The ads must not appear again in their current form. We told the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, and Reach to ensure that all future marketing communications were prominently and clearly identifiable as such.”
