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10 Nov, 09:53 JD Sports Christmas advert 2026: Create The New swaps festive nostalgia for young creatives 
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Agencies A to ZAll 17 ASA rulings from October 2026, all upheld: weight-loss jab pharmacies, fake closing-down sales, AI trading and betting apps, a sexist game ad and hidden advertorials, with the CAP rules and lessons.
The Advertising Standards Authority published 17 formal rulings in October 2026, across four Wednesday releases on 7, 14, 21 and 28 October, and it upheld every one of them. Not a single household name was among them. The month belonged to small online sellers buying paid social and search ads: online pharmacies, fake closing-down sales, trading apps, a mobile game and a betting comparison site.
Our take: October is a portrait of where the ASA now spends its time. The regulator is policing the long tail of paid social, where an ad can be built, targeted and spent in an afternoon, and the same five mistakes keep coming back. If you advertise on Meta, Google or YouTube, this is the most useful month of case law in a while.
Every ruling was upheld, and in each case the ASA told the advertiser the ad must not appear again in the form complained of. The ASA cannot fine anyone, but it can refer advertisers to CAP’s Compliance team for further sanctions. It did that twice this month, both times with advertisers that ignored its enquiries.
The 7 October batch was the ASA’s latest move in a long-running project on prescription-only weight-loss medicines, which by law cannot be advertised to the public. The Care Pharmacy ran a Google ad showing a grey injection pen next to a £149.99 price. Juniper offered “50% Off” weight-loss medication from £65 with a “6 Month Price Lock”. MedExpress promised a treatment that “helps silence food noise”, reduces cravings and helps you “feel fuller for longer”.
None of them named a drug, and none of that mattered. The ASA held that each ad promoted a prescription-only medicine to the public, breaching CAP rule 12.12. “Food noise” is now on the record as a phrase the regulator reads as a reference to GLP-1 jabs, as we reported when the rulings landed.
Two more pharmacies went further. Pharmacy Online and Simple Online Pharmacy trailed the new oral weight-loss pill before it was licensed, with lines such as “NO NEEDLE. COMING SOON.” That breached rules 12.1 and 12.11 on medicinal claims and unlicensed products, as well as 12.12 for the ads that ran once it was licensed.
The sixth health ruling was different. Do Health, a blood-testing app co-founded by Dr Chatterjee, was found to have implied its tests could help prevent and diagnose conditions such as type 2 diabetes and Alzheimer’s disease, and give more tailored advice than generic guidance. The complaint came from a GP, and the ASA ruled the claims unsubstantiated under rules 3.1, 3.7 and 12.1.
Two jewellery sellers were caught using the same script. Harrison & James ran a YouTube ad showing a shop window poster that read “CLOSING SUNDAY, EVERYTHING FREE”, over the line “Closing after 46 years”. Its landing page said the owners were retiring and “giving everything away for free, you only cover shipping”. Proud & Free posted that it was “closing Proud & Free” and giving away what remained, with “EVERYTHING FREE STORE WIDE UNTIL MIDNIGHT”.
Complainants believed both businesses were still trading, and the ASA agreed the closure claims were misleading under rules 3.1 and 3.30, which cover availability. The “free” claims also failed: under rule 3.23, something can only be called free if the shopper pays no more than the unavoidable cost of delivery, and the shipping charges went beyond that. Harrison & James also broke the rules on reviews and endorsements. Proud & Free left out its trading identity and address, never responded to the ASA and was referred to CAP’s Compliance team.
This is the oldest trick in retail, rebuilt for social ads. The lesson for any brand running urgency messaging is that “last chance”, “closing” and “ends tonight” are factual claims, and the ASA treats them as such. Our guide to UK advertising rules covers the price and availability sections in detail.
Three rulings on 14 October dealt with apps promising easy money. ChartPrime and Finelo, which promoted a platform called Brianna Trades, sold trading education through Facebook ads. One promised that trading “doesn’t need a finance degree. Just AI that does the hard part, and 15 minutes a day”.
The ASA found that neither made clear that investments can go down as well as up, that both implied investing was close to risk-free, and that they took advantage of inexperienced consumers by suggesting anyone could profit quickly. That breached rule 3.1 and rules 14.1 and 14.4 on financial products.
AI Scorecast, a football prediction app from HRY Games, claimed in a Facebook ad that its AI “predicts outcomes with a 97% accuracy rate” and creates “high odds betting slips”. The ASA ruled it socially irresponsible and misleading under rules 1.3 and 3.1, because it implied users were very likely to profit from gambling. HRY Games did not respond to the investigation and was referred to CAP’s Compliance team.
The month’s two harm and offence rulings both involved ads seen on everyday platforms. An in-game ad for the mobile strategy game Last Light: Rebirth, seen inside the Sudoku.com app, showed a sleeping, sexualised female character whose tights were pulled off by an on-screen hand before she was hit with a fly swatter. The ASA ruled that it objectified women and condoned and trivialised violence, breaching rules 1.3, 4.1, 4.4 and 4.9.
A YouTube ad for RiseGuide, a self-improvement app, followed a South Asian woman called Priya through a humiliating first day at work, apologising repeatedly while colleagues mocked her, one guessing she came from “some outsource shop in Bangalore”. Four people complained. The ASA ruled that the ad perpetuated harmful racial stereotypes and was likely to cause serious offence, breaching rules 1.3 and 4.1.
Neither advertiser will be familiar to most UK marketers, but the principle applies to every brand that uses a “before” character to set up a transformation. The ASA judges the stereotype, not the happy ending.
Home + Health, a dishwasher tablet brand, ran Facebook ads linking to what looked like an independent “5 Best Non-Toxic Dishwasher Tablets” review, complete with named testers. It was the brand’s own marketing. The ASA ruled the ads were not obviously identifiable as advertising, breaching rules 2.1, 2.3 and 2.4, and that claims about standard tablets harming gut health were unsubstantiated and unfairly compared rivals, under rules 3.1, 3.7 and 3.32.
Supplement brand Nutrition Geeks promoted creatine with the line “From pancake to peach”, a before-and-after drawing of a bottom, and claims to “support muscle strength”. Health claims for food supplements must be authorised on the GB nutrition and health claims register and used in the approved wording, and these were not, breaching rules 15.1, 15.1.1 and 15.7.
The 28 October rulings, which we covered on the day, both concerned search ads. Optival, which runs a betting comparison site, had its ad served to someone who searched “self exclusion bookies”. It blamed Google’s automated query matching, but the ASA said gambling marketers need extremely robust controls and that its were not, breaching rule 1.3.
Attraction Tickets promised “Find A Lower Price & We’ll Match It” without saying the promise only applied to tickets from ABTA or ABTOT members. Google’s character limits were no defence, and the ad breached rules 3.1 and 3.3.
The ASA published 17 formal rulings in October 2026 and upheld all 17. Many covered more than one ad. It also resolves many complaints informally each week, without a published ruling, including nine on 28 October alone.
The Care Pharmacy, Pharmacy Online, Juniper, MedExpress, Simple Online Pharmacy, Do Health, Harrison & James, Proud & Free, ChartPrime, Finelo, AI Scorecast, Nutrition Geeks, Last Light: Rebirth, RiseGuide, Home + Health, Optival and Attraction Tickets.
No. The ASA can require an ad to be withdrawn and can apply sanctions such as ad alerts to media owners, removal of paid search ads and referral to Trading Standards or Ofcom for persistent offenders. Our guide to how to complain to the ASA explains what happens after a complaint.
For the previous month, see ASA rulings, September 2026.
All rulings are from the ASA rulings register, published on 7, 14, 21 and 28 October 2026. CAP Code references are to Edition 12, as cited in each ruling. Last verified 30 October 2026.
He plans, buys and reviews advertising for a living, and helps score campaigns on the site against the same five Crown Score criteria alongside other authors and contributors.
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