Is play time over?

[Ashley Brown]

No-one can avoid hearing about recent events where adverts have appeared on client/brand un-friendly sites and social networks and I wanted to know your thoughts on whether (with the massive growth that it’s witnessing) digital media can continue to self regulate or does the government need to step in and legislate?

This is a massive topic and something I'm trying to find a decent answer to and I'd like to know what you all think. With online budgets growing every day are bodies such as the IAB and Advertising Association doing enough to protect both brand integrity and user experience, or do we need further ruling to be implemented by the government to reflect the legislation that's in place in offline media?

[Ramzi Yakob]

I think that user experience when it comes to online is the most important thing. It is after all 'their media', and not ours (advertisers/marketers). If we inflict restrictions on the internet which were not there before simply because Vodaphone isn't happy about ads appearing next to someone's profile page because of their personal beliefs, then you can imagine how much love said brand would get from the users.

If the advertisers don't want to be in a space they can't control then they are going to have to stick to TV, press, radio etc - but even then, there are letters to the editors and opinion pieces in newspapers, there are listeners who phone into radio stations and may say something controversial... so it depends on how far you want to take it as ultimately we could say that no medium is safe for advertisers.

I can understand why the advertisers pulled their ads, mainly because they didn't want to be seen to condone such things, and god forbid because a journalist took a screen grab of the ads on the page, said they were going to write about it, and then asked for a comment from the organisations in question. No one would like to be in that situation.

Having said that... we need to face the reality of the fact that the internet can't be policed to such a lame degree - especially if the primary reason is because of companies wanting to sell stuff not being happy about naughty words on the internet. The advertising industry would become the most hated in the world overnight if it did happen.

Doing something a bit less lame - and excluding advertising from UGC sites - wouldn't be too bad. But then a lot of 'free services' online wouldn't be free any more which would again make users leave in their droves. On top of this, the amount of budget going into the digital space is increasing rapidly but the amount of available UK inventory isn't growing significantly as broadband use is approaching saturation point so unless there are good reasons for people to spend a LOT more time online than they do now, generating extra impressions - then advertisers will be faced with the fact that online will be yet another medium you have to book space on months in advance of any campaigns.

-tobeconfirmed-