Second UK iPhone Ad Banned by Advertising Authority

The Advertising Standards Authority has banned an iPhone 3G commercial, claiming it was misleading consumers. The ad is the second iPhone advert to be banned by the ASA this year.

The commercial in question displayed a close-up of the iPhone 3G surfing the web. A voice over stated that the iPhone 3G was better than the first generation iPhone because it was “really fast”. Apparently people had a problem that bar the fine print in the corner reading “Network performance will vary by location”, the ad showed a phone loading pages in very short spaces of time and were disappointed to discover their own iPhone 3G did not load web pages as fast.

According to VNUnet, Apple claimed that the commercial was relative rather than absolute in nature, and that referencing 3G at the start clearly indicated the advertisement was a comparison between the iPhone 3G and the older version of the Apple cell phone. The Cupertino company also said that most people would know speeds depend on a number of different factors, as is the case with all mobile phones.

The ASA concluded that the advert was misleading because a large portion of viewers would not be familiar with 3G technology and were likely to believe that the device actually operated at similar speeds to the device in the advert. Because of this, the Association asked Apple not to show the advert again “in its current form.”

While the aforementioned advert received around 17 complaints, Apple had another commercial banned by the ASA in the UK back in August. Receiving two complaints about the iPhone ad, the Authority said it had the potential to mislead customers because it said it allowed users to fully browse the web with access to “all parts of the Internet,” despite that fact that the handset does not support Java or Flash.

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