The UK Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has completed an investigation and identified concerning content in mobile gaming advertisements. These ads depict women in a sexual manner, employ pornographic themes, and showcase scenarios featuring coercive and violent behavior without consent.
The ASA monitored these ads using avatars, which mimic the browsing habits of different demographic groups, to ensure compliance with UK guidelines. Though most of the thousands of advertisements reviewed were within the guidelines, eight specific ads were identified as violating these rules due to their portrayal of women in a harmful light.
Two advertising campaigns for an artificial intelligence chatbot app, Linky: Chat With Characters AI, showed a woman in suggestive clothing with text encouraging viewers to decide which boyfriend she should break up with. The ad then featured animated interactions with unrepresentative male characters, including descriptions of possessiveness, jealousy, and violence.
Ads for the interactive romance story game My Fantasy displayed an animation of a woman forcefully pushed onto a desk, with options suggesting a lack of consent. The ASA also noted similar problem areas with three ads for Love Sparks: Dating Sim, which featured sexually provocative imagery and suggestive options.
The ASA banned the abovementioned ads and issues a stern warning, stating that such harmful content is completely unaccepted. In addition, the watchdog published research indicating that nearly half of UK consumers are troubled by the sexualization and objectification of women in advertisements.
These findings come in the wake of related actions by the ASA, including a ban on a Next advertisement that highlighted an “unhealthily thin” model. This new information marks the latest step in the ASA’s efforts to enforce stricter guidelines on the portrayal of both men and women in advertising, which were updated following public outcry over a 2015 advertisement from Protein World.
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/media/2025/mar/20/uk-watchdog-bans-ads-mobile-gaming-apps-asa
