ASA bans Confused.com TV ad over unclear qualifying text
A TV campaign for car insurance comparison website Confused.com has been banned by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) after it received three complaints that the text within the advert was ‘illegible’.
The advert featured superimposed text that read: "Premium increase 37% (Towers Watsons data Oct 09 - Sept 10), 96% could achieve a saving, 45% could save up to £218.73 (Consumer Intelligence research Jan 11), 96.5% of 3206 respondents (Confused.com survey Nov 10)."
The complaints claimed that that font, colour, background and size of the superimposed text, could not be read, and challenged whether the information was being presented clearly.
Ownership company Inspop.com said that text was added in accordance with Clearcast guidelines and that an outline had been adding around the 16 line high letters to improve legibility against the moving background. It also said that the text was held on screen for 28 seconds of the 30 second advert, while Clearcast said that the advert had been run through its usual tests, and had asked for an addition of the white outline around the letters.
Despite this, the ASA said that qualifying text had to be present clearly and that it did not consider the text to be unclear, however it was superimposed directly onto the images of the ad itself of a moving cartoon, and this, alongside the blue text, blurred the information and was therefore not presented clearly.
It was ruled that the advert should not appear again in its current form.