Advertising, trust and growth: looking ahead to 2026

As we publish our 2025 mid-year progress report and our objectives for 2026, it's an ideal time to pause and reflect on the impact we have as an organisation by seeking to ensure advertising is legal, decent, honest and truthful.

The value of responsible advertising

We love creative, engaging, entertaining - and, yes, responsible - advertising. We know how crucial it is in funding entertainment, journalism, sport and culture; helping us to choose products and services; encouraging us to contribute to good causes; persuading us to make better lifestyle choices and stay safe - all of which plays a vital role in supporting competition and powering the economy.

The 2025 Advertising Pays report found that advertising and marketing industries contributed £109 billion of GVA (gross value added) to the UK economy in 2024, and that advertising supports more than 1.7 million jobs, making up 5% of all UK employment.

How effective regulation supports growth and creativity

At the ASA, we ensure our regulation and enforcement are proportionate and effective - supporting a level playing field among businesses, and contributing to the stable, pro-growth regulatory framework championed by, and at the heart of, the Government's economic ambitions.

As a self- and co-regulatory system, we work closely with the sector we regulate. We engage regularly with the advertising industry and its trade association representatives, through our Committees and extensive stakeholder engagement programme. We understand the industry's ambitions for growth and are able to effectively support that with appropriate regulation.

In 2024 alone, we helped businesses by delivering more than 770,000 pieces of advice and training on how to comply with our rules. Meanwhile, we acted proportionately on issues of non-compliance by prioritising advice and informal resolution whenever possible. This approach meant that only 1% of the circa 25,000 complaint cases we looked into resulted in a formal ruling.

Earlier this year, the Government published the UK's Modern Industrial Strategy, identifying the creative industries as a key sector for future innovation and growth. We welcome the Creative Industries Sector Plan, published alongside it, which sets out the opportunity to enhance the UK's position as a global creative superpower and to support the advertising industry to thrive.

In the Creative Industries Sector Plan, the Government commits to working with the advertising industry to ensure consumer trust in advertising continues to grow.

Protecting people and building public trust

Consumer confidence, in particular, is vital for economic growth. Consumer spending accounts for almost 63% of GDP. A recent report from Citizens Advice found that providing consumers with better information - or restricting what and how firms can advertise to consumers - improves their ability to understand the quality and appropriateness of products and services.

Citizens Advice goes on to say that if people aren't confident they will get a good quality product at a reasonable price, and any problems will be resolved swiftly, then they will be less willing to take a risk on new products or services in future. Therefore, they conclude, well-targeted consumer protections give people confidence to engage in markets in a way which delivers good outcomes for them and also for businesses.

We know that increased public awareness of the ASA system has a positive effect on people's trust in advertising. Protecting people is at the heart of everything we do. I've seen how ad content can cause harm, particularly to the most vulnerable, and how important ASA rulings are in ensuring the public can trust advertising.

Public trust in the ASA system is high. Our most recent tracking research from August 2025 found that 54% of the public trust us, and only 5% distrust us. We're working hard to further increase awareness of the ASA system, because knowing there's a regulator that will act on their behalf can help people feel more confident in the ads they see, hear and engage with.

Innovation, AI and the future of ad regulation

The Creative Industries Sector Plan also identifies digital marketing as a driving force for continued growth, but explains that the complex nature of the online ecosystem creates concerns around transparency and trust. We're actively involved in the Government's Online Advertising Taskforce, playing our part in addressing illegal harms and the protection of children in relation to online advertising.

As we set out in our strategy, AI-Assisted Collective Ad Regulation, we have a keen focus on online ads. That is because people, including children, spend so much time online, and businesses advertise online more than anywhere else. We continue to work hard to ensure the advertising in this space is effectively regulated.

We've also been innovative in our own use of AI. Our AI-powered Active Ad Monitoring system (AAMs), on course to scan around 40m ads this year, has been a real game changer, giving us much greater visibility of online ads and enabling us to proactively monitor potentially problematic ads.

Through our Intermediary and Platform Principles (IPP), we're working with some of the biggest companies in the online ad ecosystem to help raise advertisers' awareness of the rules and to support removal of persistently non-compliant ads.

As we look forward to 2026 and beyond, we'll continue to make sure our regulation helps responsible advertising, and advertisers, to flourish. That's good for people, good for society and good for business.