ASA rules against Camelot scratchcard ad
The Advertising Standards Authority has banned a National Lottery scratchcard ad.
The complainant who saw the ad placed outside a school challenged whether the ad for a lottery scratch card was directed at children under 16 years of age.
Camelot UK Lotteries said that their policy was that National Lottery ads should not be placed within 100 metres of a school. The ad was placed using a database which was supposed to identify and remove schools from potential locations using postcode data.
Camelot confirmed that, on this occasion, the postcode database failed to identify the school. Camelot took action to address this by ensuring the ad had been removed and they now used a different database tool which looked at the geographical boundaries of schools, rather than postcode data, to ensure that ads were not placed within 100 metres of a school.
Due to the context in which the ad appeared, the ASA felt that the audience of the poster would likely be significantly skewed towards under-16s.
It told the company that ads must not be displayed again in close proximity to a school, and to take greater measures to ensure that its lottery ads are not directed towards children under 16.
