Banned! Levelling Up adverts fall foul of standards watchdog

The Advertising Standards Authority has banned advertorial material issued by the government department responsible for rental reform and housing.

Two Labour MPs - Lisa Nandy and Alex Norris - challenged whether the online ads were obviously identifiable as marketing communications.

The ASA upheld their complaint and ordered the Department of Levelling Up, Housing and Communities to ensure the advertising never re-appeared in that form.

The controversy surrounds ads in seven local or regional online news services run by the Reach company, which were set out in a design and format similar to genuine news stories. 

They purported to show the successes of the government’s Levelling Up agenda - but the MPs felt the factual style masked the true marketing intent of the advertisements.

The advertisements purported to explain how Levelling Up was working in different areas and its perceived benefits, including housing.

A statement from the ASA says: “The ASA understood that the ads would generally be accessed either via the homepage of the newspaper’s website or by readers who had interacted with a Facebook or Google ad, which included statements such as ‘What is Levelling Up? Find out where investments are being made in Derby and your local area’.

“Whilst those ads were labelled, we noted that the statements did not reference the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities and it was not clear from the text that the subsequent article would also be an ad. We noted that on the homepage, the image for the ad was labelled ADVERTORIAL in the top-left corner. 

“However, we considered that the font used for the label was small, particularly compared with other text used on the webpage, and as such it was not sufficiently clear that the linked article was an ad. 

“Additionally, readers might arrive at the ad via another route. It was therefore necessary for the ads to be obviously identifiable as ads.”

And the authority concludes: “The ads must not appear again in their current form. We told the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, and Reach Plc to ensure that all future marketing communications were prominently and clearly identifiable as such.”