The Advertising Association promotes the role and rights of responsible advertising and its value to people, society, businesses and the economy. We represent UK advertisers, agencies, media owners and tech companies on behalf of the entire industry, acting as the connection between industry professionals and the politicians and policy-makers.

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The Advertising Association focuses on major industry and policy areas that have huge ramifications on UK advertising. This section contains our work around Brexit, HFSS and gambling advertising, data and e-privacy, trust, the digital charter and our Industrial Strategy campaigns.

Credos is the advertising industry’s independent think tank. It produces research, evidence and reports into the impact and effectiveness of and public and political response to advertising on behalf of UK advertisers in order to enable the industry to make informed decisions.

Front Foot is our industry’s member network of over 50 businesses across UK advertising. It aims to promote the role of responsible advertising and its value to people, society and the economy through a coalition of senior leaders from advertisers, agencies and media owners.

We run a number of events throughout the year, from our annual LEAD summit to the Media Business Course and regular breakfast briefings for our members. We are also the official UK representative for the world’s biggest festival of creativity – Cannes Lions.

Our view on the Internet Safety Strategy

Data and E-Privacy News

In October the Government published their Green Paper on their Internet Safety Strategy. It was a Conservative manifesto commitment to “make Britain is the safest place in the world to be online”.

Firstly, we wholeheartedly share the Government’s ambition to make the UK the best and safest place to be online and we, of course, want the country to represent a gold standard in digital for others to admire, follow and emulate and ensure that the UK retains its leading role in e-commerce and digital advertising.

We also welcome Government’s acknowledgement that the best results can be achieved by working in partnership with industry. Self-regulation is a crucial element in the UK’s leadership in digital advertising. The industry is committed to maintaining an effective self-regulatory system and is currently in discussions to ensure its sustainable funding.

Our comments focus specifically on sections of the Green Paper that directly refer to the advertising and marketing communications sector:

• Industry initiatives to tackle advertising misplacement (Section 5.4)
• Our priorities for the post-Brexit data protection regulatory framework (Section 5.5)
• Industry initiatives to support children’s digital literacy (Section 7.2)

Download our internet safety strategy response.