GovWire

Consultation outcome: Online Advertising Programme

Department For Culture Media Sport

July 25
08:34 2023

Detail of outcome

We received 115 responses to the consultation, including 12 advertisers/brands, 19 civil society organisations, 10 consumer groups, 7 platforms and 8 regulators. The government response sets out the next steps for the Online Advertising Programme, including its focus.

The Online Advertising Programme will be a targeted programme, focused on:

  • tackling illegal advertising
  • increasing protections for children and young people under 18 against adverts for products and services that are illegal to be sold to them

To do so, the government intends to:

  • convene a ministerially-led industry taskforce this summer, to drive forward non-legislative action addressing illegal harms and the protection of children
  • conduct a further consultation on the details of proposed regulation, to ensure it is coherent, logical and can be designed and implemented in partnership with industry
  • bring forward legislation when parliamentary time allows, to introduce a new regulatory framework for paid-for online advertising, focusing on tackling illegal advertising content and strengthening protections for children

Original consultation

Summary

The Online Advertising Programme will review the regulatory framework of paid-for online advertising

This consultation ran from
to

Consultation description

The Online Advertising Programme will review the regulatory framework of paid-for online advertising to tackle the evident lack of transparency and accountability across the whole supply chain. It will consider how we can build on the existing self-regulatory framework, by strengthening the mechanisms currently in place and those being developed, to equip our regulators to meet the challenges of the online sphere, whilst maintaining this governments pro-innovation and proportionate approach to digital regulation.

This review will work in conjunction with the measures being introduced through the forthcoming Online Safety Bill, as well as those this government is developing to address competition and data protection issues across the online landscape. Seeking to complement the online safety legislation being implemented to regulate user-generated content, the Online Advertising Programme will look specifically at paid-for online advertising to ensure holistic cover across the online content that can create harm for consumers and businesses alike.

Research Report into online advertising

Under documents there is a research report entitled Online Advertising Programme - market insights final report. This research report was commissionedby DCMS and authored by independent digital media consultancy, Spark Ninety. The report is based on desk research and interviews withgovernment agencies and industry stakeholders.

The research and interviews were conducted from February to April of 2022.The finalised report was provided to DCMS after the consultation closedon 8 June 2022.This report does not take consultation responses into account. The report is not indicative of the governments position on the Online Advertising Programme ordigital policy morebroadly. The government will publish a response to the Online Advertising Programmepublic consultationin due courseand will take the findings of this report into consideration, alongside consultation responses and other evidence it has received.

Documents

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