New law guides ad placement on Video on Demand

Concerns about inappropriate adverts appearing on video on demand (VoD) services have been addressed by a new law.

Providers of these services, such as Channel 4’s 4OD and the ITV Player, must now comply with the new Audio Visual Media Services (AVMS) Directive, which comes into force on 19 December 2009.

AVMS is the successor to the Television Without Frontiers Directive. It imposes the British Code of Advertising, Sales Promotion and Direct Marketing (CAP Code) on these services. This means in future that the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) can act if viewers complain about an ad.

Until now, CAP has been the rule book for non-broadcast ads, sales promotions and marketing such as those appearing in newspapers.

It imposes similar rules to those that apply linear broadcasts that fall under the remit of the Broadcast Committee of Advertising Practice (BCAP) code.

Although VoD ads don’t have to be cleared in the same way as those appearing on traditional TV services (called linear TV), areas VoD services must abide by include banning product placement in all children’s programmes (although unlike on linear TV, it is permitted on other programmes broadcast via VoD), alcohol advertising and discrimination.

To ensure that the standards are adhered to, VoD providers, such as Virgin, Sky, ITV, Channel 4 and Five began checking adverts appearing on their services before the AVMS became law.

Clearcast, which monitors the ads before they have been aired for these broadcasters and other companies, said because of the nature of VoD, timing restrictions currently assigned to linear ads cannot be carried across.

The company said it would assign levels for providers that will indicate whether there is violence, nudity, or potential harm or offence in an ad.

The degree will be indicated by levels. Level one ads must not be broadcast around children's programmes, level two ads can’t be shown before 7.30pm, level three will have a watershed of after 9pm, and levels four and five for those only to be shown after 10pm and 11pm respectively.

The inclusion of online and on-demand video in the AVMS Directive was controversial as observers feared that the European Commission was attempting to extend media regulation to the whole internet; for example user-generated videos, such as those posed on Youtube.

Clearcast pointed out that the directive is only applicable to mass-market TV-like services. It also said some ads may continue to fall under the remit of BCAP rather than CAP. In addition, some ads that are cleared for linear TV, will automatically be fine to be shown via VoD.

Kristoffer Hammer for Clearcast said: “Any display advertisements or audio-visual ads the viewer will see before selecting a VoD programme will not be covered by the directive. The directive only covers the pre-, mid and post-ads that are associated with the individual programme.”