We’ve reached the end. Not the end of ad regulation of course, but the end of our retrospective of the last 50 years. We hope you’ve enjoyed looking back on the key moments in our history. Highlights are many – who knew that ‘colour ads’ would prove a regulatory challenge, labelling regulations could be fun or that we would be compared to a sumo wrestler. And so, once more unto the breach (not of the Advertising Code) as we look back on the year that was 2010.

Following a marathon two-year Code review, the results were published in September 2010, in the form of the UK Code of Non-broadcast Advertising, Sales Promotion and Direct Marketing and the UK Code of Broadcast Advertising. During this period, the advertising industry reached its landmark agreement to bring marketing claims on companies’ own websites under the ASA’s online remit.

We also started to regulate video-on-demand under a co-regulatory partnership with Ofcom.

In recognition of the review process, CAP and BCAP won the European Advertising Standards Alliance Best Practice Gold Award 2010 to acknowledge the breadth and success of the review. Any visitors to the ASA/CAP’s offices can view this award on our reception desk.

2010 also marked the departure of Andrew Brown following ten years as Chairman of CAP, six years as Chairman of BCAP. He was replaced by James Best, former Chairman of ad agency DDB UK, and previously a member of the ASA Council as well.

Read our 2010 Annual Report here.

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