BuzzFeed breaks UK ad rules over misleading advertorial

BuzzFeed has broken the UK advertising rules for failing to make it clear that an article on “14 laundry fails” that promoted Dylon was an online advertorial paid for by the dye brand.

It is the first time BuzzFeed, which has built an international business out of so-called native advertising that creates paid-for articles for brands, has fallen foul of the UK advertising watchdog.

The advertorial for Henkel-owned Dylon was a classic BuzzFeed-style listicle piece that ran with the headline “14 Laundry Fails We’ve All Experienced”.

The article featured photos and social media posts, including a live feed from Dylon’s Colour Catcher Facebook page, highlighting laundry disasters.

At the bottom of the piece ran the line “It’s at times like these we are thankful that Dylon Colour Catcher is there to save us from ourselves. You lose, little red sock!”

The Advertising Standards Authority received a complaint that the advertorial broke the UK code because it was not clearly identified as a piece of marketing.

BuzzFeed UK, which also responded on behalf of Henkel, said the lack of ASA rulings relating to native advertising in the UK meant the company relied on the practices used in the US to guide how advertorials are labelled.

The publisher said that where the advertorial was actively promoted on its homepage it ran with a label saying “promoted by” with Dylon’s name and logo.

It also ran with text saying “Dylon Brand Publisher” next to a logo for Dylon’s Colour Catcher product.

The company said the labels were enough to differentiate the advertorial from editorial content which always appears with a reporter’s name, picture and byline.

The ASA agreed with BuzzFeed’s labelling strategy for its homepage and in search listings but said readers could still access the advertorial from many other media channels and the company had failed to make it “immediately clear” when the article was accessed.

“[The labelling] was not sufficient to make clear that the main content of the web page was an advertorial and that editorial content was therefore retained by the advertiser,” said the ASA.

“We further noted that the web page was very long and visitors to it would therefore not see the reference to Dylon Colour Catcher at the bottom of the page until they had already engaged with the content.”

The watchdog added that the “brand publisher” label at the top of the web page, next to the Dylon name and logo, was “not particularly prominent” and the terminology used did not “adequately convey the commercial nature of the content to consumers”.

“The ad must not appear again in its current form,” said the ASA. “We told Henkel and BuzzFeed UK to ensure that ads were obviously identifiable as marketing communications, including by using labels other than ‘Brand Publisher’ for advertorials.”

A BuzzFeed spokeman said: “We’re currently reaching out to the ASA to speak with them about this recent update. We’re always testing and iterating our ad products and will be reviewing the guidelines accordingly.”

The ruling comes two weeks after the ASA reprimanded the Telegraph for failing to adequately label an online advertorial for Michelin tyres.

The UK watchdog has made very few rulings about the increasingly thorny issue of how publishers label sponsored and paid-for articles.

In 2014, the ASA banned a promotion by Outbrain, which provides recommended links to advertiser-funded articles for thousands of websites, relating to a link to content offered at the bottom of an article on the Independent website which was not identifiable as paid-for and constituted advertising

In August, US regulators ordered an Instagram post featuring Kim Kardashian enthusiastically promoting a morning sickness treatment to be taken down for breaking advertising laws.