Keyword choice is subject to advertising rules, say FSA and OFT

Consumer regulator the Office of Fair Trading and City watchdog the Financial Services Authority have said that their rules on advertising control not just the words used in the ads but the words used to trigger them.

"Where the sponsored link is not in line with the search term used and the website returned by the sponsored link does not accurately reflect the expectations created by the search term used, the sponsored link would not be fair, clear and not misleading," said guidance published by the two regulators.

The guidance applies to advertisers of financial services and products. It gives examples that their research had uncovered.

"The phrase ‘independent financial advises' (sic) produced firms which were not independent. This could give rise to the risk that consumers are misled into dealing with firms which are not independent. The phrase ‘guaranteed returns’, returned firms whose investment products are linked to the performance of stocks and shares where returns could not in fact be guaranteed. The term ‘free advice’ included links to firms whose advice was not free," it said.

The regulators told advertisers to take advantage of the facility offered by search engines to exclude certain terms from the search terms they purchase. For example, with Google AdWords an advertiser can sponsor "financial advisers" and list the term "independent financial advisers" in its 'Negative Keywords'.

"Firms should give careful consideration to these to help ensure that their sponsored links do not mislead consumers, and work with search engine providers to use these facilities responsibly," said the guidance.

The FSA and OFT warned advertisers to be careful.

"Firms should be mindful of this when purchasing – or instructing media agencies to purchase – search terms on their behalf from search engine providers," said the guidance. "They should also have adequate systems and controls in place to ensure they do not buy keywords or terms which result in misleading return results."

The guidance stressed that sometimes the misleading words whose association is bought in advertising systems such as Google's AdWords could be the names of competitors.

"We would also remind firms not to bid on the names of other firms/competitors if this could result in misleading the consumer or creating an expectation that their firm is the same as the one the consumer has searched on," it said.

The FSA conducted research in 2007 which uncovered widespread breaches of advertising rules in financial services ads. It found that a quarter of the ads it checked were difficult for consumers to use or failed to include key information.

The FSA and OFT's guidance outlines what information an ad must have if it makes certain claims. It gave examples of fictional ads that broke the rules because they did not publish typical APR in relation to advertised credit or did not specify repayment details or failed to make clear conditions for access to certain prices or rates.

"For promotions to be fair, clear, and not misleading, there should be no mismatch between the general impression the promotion creates and the experience the consumer has when responding to it," said the guidance. "So we would not want the advert to give the impression that most customers will be eligible for the price or saving when neither of these is representative of the target audience of the promotion, or when only a small proportion of customers likely to respond to the promotion will receive the claimed price or saving."