UK advertising watchdog cracks down on Just Eat junk food ad for targeting under-16s

21 Aug 2024 --- The UK’s Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has banned an advertisement by the food delivery company Just Eat, featuring a McDonald’s burger. The regulatory authority rules that the paid Facebook ad failed to ensure it was not aimed at children under 16. 

The ASA has ordered that the ad must not appear in its current form.

The anti-junk food youth activist group Bite Back 2030 complained about the ad in December 2023, saying it promoted food products high in fat, salt or sugar (HFSS) to audiences younger than 16 on social media platforms.

“We concluded that Just Eat had not taken sufficient care to ensure that the ad, which promoted several HFSS products, was not directed at individuals aged under 16 years. The ad, therefore, breached Committee of Advertising Practice (CAP) Code (Edition 12) rule 15.18 (HFSS product and placement),” the ASA ruling notes.

Crackdown on HFSS ads

The original ad reportedly said: “Fancy a McMuffin in the morning? McNugget for lunch? Or a big night in with a Big Mac? Get them delivered right here.” 

It also featured a changing image of McNuggets, which switched to the logos of McDonald’s and Just Eat.

The CAP is ASA’s sister organization and requires HFSS product ads not to be directed at people under 16 through the media platform or content in which they appear.

“The ASA understood that the Big Mac was an HFSS product for the purposes of the CAP Code. We also understood that there were six variations of the McMuffin, five of which contained meat, and that those meat McMuffins were also HFSS products. The ad was, therefore, an HFSS product ad,” reads the ruling.

Age-targeting tools

Just Eat maintained that it used age-targeting to reach audiences aged 18 and above through Meta’s suite of tools. It further argued that if a Facebook user under 18 created an account on the site, they could not view the ad.

The anti-junk food youth activist group Bite Back 2030 complained about the ad in December 2023.The food takeaway firm presented data collected from Facebook, which it claimed demonstrated that the ad had not been shown to viewers registered as under 18 on the platform in December 2023.

The ASA notes that Just Eat confirmed it had not used interest-based targeting to promote the ad but believed it was responsible.

Importance of interest-based targeting

The ASA observes that social media users can misreport their age or use a different device to access age-restricted content, which makes interest-based targeting crucial.

The advertising regulator concludes that while Just Eat did use Meta’s age-based targeting tools to limit the ad to viewers aged above 18, it did not use such interest-based targeting to exclude people more likely to be below 16 from the ad’s target audience.

Because the ad was paid for, the ASA highlights Just Eat could have opted to use the interest-based targeting option to further minimize exposure of the ad to users under 16.

The ruling is in line with CAP’s guidance on age-restricted ads, which says that companies should be able to prove that they took all possible steps to ensure that HFSS ads do not reach children under 16.

The UK is gradually tightening the regulation on junk food advertisements. Labour’s manifesto pledges to ban the advertising of junk food to children before the 9 p.m. TV watershed and the sale of energy drinks to those under 16.

However, healthcare groups have called for stricter government action, reflecting strong public support for diets free of ultra-processed and junk food and heavier tax levies on companies that produce such goods to help tackle the obesity crisis.

By Anvisha Manral