The Advertising Standards Authority will soon be responsible for regulating all marketing communications made online by companies based or operating in the UK.

Until today, ASA’s remit for online advertising has been relatively limited. Whilst sales promotions or ads in paid-for space such as PPC display or search engine marketing platforms have been under the regulators purview for some time, a significant amount of marketing content fell outside of this remit.

However the Committee of Advertising Practice (CAP) has now extended ASA’s remit as well as granting new sanctions for the regulatory body to enforce best practice and adherence to the CAP code for Non-broadcast Advertising, Sales Promotion and Direct Marketing. The only exceptions will be journalistic and editorial content or material that relates to causes and ideas rather than products or services, except where such material is a direct solicitation for fund-raising, due to the risk of curtailing freedom of speech online.

“This is a massive step,” said a spokesman for ASA to BBC News. “Consumers don’t differentiate between adverts on TV or online and this ensures that claims online will be subject to the same strict scrutiny of those in traditional media.”

Advertisers will have until the first of March 2011 to ensure that their content marketing strategies comply with the CAP code. Any one in breach of the code after this point will, if a complaint is made against their marketing communications, be subject to the same sanctions that ASA possesses already as well as two new sanctions granted by CAP specifically for the extended remit.

These new sanctions are both based around search engine marketing. PPC ads on search advertising platforms such as AdWords that link to a page hosting non compliant material can now be removed by ASA with the agreement of the search engine, which Google has already nominally approved. Additionally, ASA itself will be allowed to run search engine marketing campaigns where it will place advertisements online to highlight an advertiser’s continued non-compliance with the new code.

“We have received over 4,500 complaints since 2009 about marketing communications on websites we couldn’t deal with,” said Lord Smith, chairman of ASA, “but from March 1 anyone who has a concern about a marketing communication online will be able to turn to ASA.”