The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) which is the independent regulator of advertising across all media the United Kingdom has just banned 1and1.com new gTLD television commercials as being misleading.
A television commercial similar to the one 1and1.com was running in the United States, was also running in the UK.
The ASA applies the Advertising Codes, which are written by the Committees of Advertising Practice. Our work includes acting on complaints and proactively checking the media to take action against misleading, harmful or offensive advertisements.
“The ASA noted the ad invited consumers to choose from over 700 new domains and to pre-order those domains. ”
“Whilst we considered consumers would understand the reference to ‘pre-order’ to mean that the domain names were not currently available, we considered they would understand the ad to mean that they could place an order with 1&1 Internet that would secure their chosen domain name when it became available. ”
“However, we understood that that was not the case and that upon receipt of a pre-order, 1&1 Internet would pass on the customer’s request to the relevant domain name registry, who would apply their own allocation process when the requested domain name became available. ”
“We therefore considered the presentation of the ad was likely to mislead. ”
“On that basis, we concluded that the ad breached the Code.”
The ruling means the ad cannot run again in the UK in its current form.
I hate to say I told you so but i did back on September 22nd right after the commercials started airing.
Hat Tip: @AffiliateFYI
Hooray !!! …. Finally a ” Much Needed” sober dose of justice & logic to this annoying & dubious cyber avalanche proliferating all over the place
they should be blocked from doing business at all! the most shady company in our industry
Good thing they still have all of the US to be deceptive in.
Hello MHB,
Thanks for covering this for your readerships sake. Other gTLD censoring will be coming to our shores soon.
” The Coming Domain Registrar Bubble Collapse ”
” Excessive Supply Tinges All Old, and New Market Bubbles ”
No matter how many early warning signs appear, the froth in registrars and their hot stories that are always tied to .COM Franchise successes continue to inflate the excessive oversupply of both registrars and new uneeded extensions.No matter how Hot the promotional bluster, history shows that :Those that spot the overheating and divest, walk away before the Bubble bursts.Thereby transfering the bag holding to someone else. Domainers and End-users BEWARE; These current (Red Flag) Market Fundamental Underpinnings are now firmly in place. The coming Mash-Ups and Collisions caused by the gTLD experiment, will cause a massive flight of Online business owners to the Safety and Reliability of the .COM Franchise Marketing Model. Much as the Derivatives debacle of 07 sent investors to the safety and reliability of the treasury markets. (Flight To Safety)
“Without question, the gTLD experiment will expand the .COM Franchise Usage and its Channel Traffic Patterns, INEXORABLY JAS 12/19/13 ”
Gratefully, Jeff Schneider (Contact Group) (Metal Tiger)
Domainer Extraordinaire wrote:
> “Good thing they still have all of the US to be deceptive in.”
That’s okay. 99.274% of the people in the US either don’t care or have no idea what the ad is talking about, anyway.