Advertising and Marketing | UK Regulatory Outlook May 2025

HFSS advertising restrictions: government confirms brand advertising is out of scope and delays ban until 5 January 2026 

In a welcome announcement for the food and drink industry, the UK government has confirmed, in a written statement, its intention to introduce secondary legislation that will explicitly exempt "brand advertising" from the advertising restrictions of less healthy food and drink on TV and online. To allow time for consultation on the draft secondary legislation, the government has also announced the delay to the formal date for the restrictions to come into force – from 1 October 2025 to 5 January 2026.  

This follows industry concerns around the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA)'s implementation guidance and the government's previous statement, reiterating its view that pure brand advertising is not in scope of the incoming advertising restrictions. The government states that this clarification will enable the regulators to deliver clear guidance and assist the industry to prepare advertising campaigns with confidence.  

However, advertisers and broadcasters, with the support of online platforms and publishers, have committed to the government that they will comply with the restrictions as if they were still coming into force from 1 October 2025. Therefore, the government would expect that ads for specific identifiable less healthy products will not be shown on TV between 5:30am and 9pm or at any time online from 1 October 2025. The legal clarification on "brand advertising" will land before the restrictions come into force legally on 5 January 2026, subject to Parliamentary approval. 

ASA makes recommendations to influencers on disclosing ads on social media 

The ASA has published a report looking at the rates at which influencers are complying with the rules on making it clear when their social media posts are ads.  

The ASA used its AI-based Active Ad Monitoring System and analysed over 50,000 pieces of content on social media, from 509 UK-based accounts and 390 individual influencers, and manually assessed a representative sample.  

The ASA's findings include: 

• There has been some improvement in ad disclosure, but the overall rate is still lower than expected and further targeted enforcement action is needed.
• Applying an estimation based on the study findings, approximately 57% of influencer content analysed by the ASA was adequately disclosed, while 43% of influencer ads employed no disclosure at all.
• Some undisclosed ads did make some attempt to use a disclosure label (like "gifted", "pr trip", "affiliate"), but the ASA has previously ruled and the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has previously advised that this type of language fails to make the commercial nature of the content clear. 

The ASA says that it will apply sanctions to influencer accounts that consistently and repeatedly fail to disclose, or inadequately disclose, advertising.  

As a result of the findings, the ASA has provided some recommendations:  

• All the parties in the advertising supply chain must contribute to ensuring that all advertising content is clearly disclosed. Influencers, brands and agencies should use platforms' own ad disclosure tools.   
• Ads must be obviously identifiable as ads. ASA and CMA advice strongly recommends applying "Ad" or "#ad" to social media posts to make it clear. If influencers want to highlight the type of commercial relationship, they should put "Ad" first – for example, "Ad – Gifted", "#ad – prtrip".
• Influencers and brands cannot rely on ad disclosure in bios or other advertising posts to comply with the rules – each piece of advertising content must be disclosed as an ad.
• When advertising a brand, the ASA will find disclosure "clear by context" if the content clearly indicates that it is own brand advertising. No additional ad disclosure label will be required in that situation. If the brand name matches the name of the advertiser's account, there is a higher likelihood that ad disclosure will be considered "clear by context". However, the ASA has previously ruled that disclosure using abbreviated versions of an influencer's name is unlikely to be regarded as clear. If the names do not match, it is best to include an ad disclosure label.  

While there has been a significant improvement in ad disclosure since 2021, which the ASA attributes to its compliance monitoring and action, the ASA is also clear that further action is required. Following publication of its report on the online supply pathway of ads for age-restricted products in December last year (see this Regulatory Outlook), as well as last month's study of in-app ads (see this Marketinglaw Update) and the regulator's plans to create a set of principles that intermediaries sign up to (see below), the ASA also appears to be focusing more and more on intermediary parties in the supply pathway, such as influencers and encouraging them to ensure compliance with the rules alongside advertisers and publishers.  

CAP publishes a guide to changes to the misleading advertising rules 

The Committee of Advertising Practice (CAP) has published a quick guide to changes to the misleading advertising rules. It explains amendments to the advertising codes made following the unfair commercial practices provisions in the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024, which came into effect on 6 April 2025. The guide focuses on drip pricing, fake reviews and vulnerable consumers, as the key points to be aware of in an otherwise subtle set of changes. See this Insight and this MarketingLaw article for more information.  

ASA and CAP publish annual report 2024 

The ASA and CAP's annual report 2024 covers the past year's achievements and outlines plans for 2025. 

Among other things, in 2025, the regulators will: 

• Continue to develop the Active Ad Monitoring system, increasing the number of areas it monitors and integrating it more deeply into their work.
• Continue to ensure young people and children are protected from advertising-related harms, including by publishing the results of another Tech4Good project looking into the online supply pathway of in-app adds that objectify women.
• Publish the third project in their series of research on public attitudes to advertising, commissioned in 2024, covering the public's views on the depiction of older people in ads and to what extent certain portrayals give rise to offence or harm.
• Continue work on creating an online self-regulatory framework focused on holding advertisers to account for the creative content and placement of their ads, complemented by a set of principles, administered by the ASA, to which platforms and intermediaries agree to be held. The aim is to deliver the framework by 2026.