TalkTalk's catch-up telly fib silenced by ad watchdog

Budget telco TalkTalk has been barked at by the Advertising Standards Authority after the company wrongly suggested that a whole host of TV channels were available via its catch-up service.

Two complainants griped to the watchdog about a telly ad they said had misled them by implying that content on television services was accessible from the likes of ITV Player, 4OD and BBC iPlayer.

The ASA agreed that TalkTalk had exaggerated the extent to which such TV shows were available via the catch-up services it had featured in its ad.

TalkTalk unsuccessfully argued that it had been careful to avoid "making claims about the content available on various services" because the ISP had "limited control over the availability of content in general".

It said:

[W]e noted that the voice-over stated "You can watch Catch-Up TV on your TV" and "YouView also lets you scroll back to shows you've missed from the last seven days …" and that the ad included the logos of BBC iPlayer, ITV Player, 4OD, and Demand 5 and a list of channels, including BBC1, BBC2, ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5 and ITV2, on the service's EPG [electronic programme guide].

We considered that the imagery along with the voice-over suggested that the advertised service included all of the catch up content of the on-demand services referred to. Because this was not the case and some catch up content was excluded from the on-demand services included in the advertiser service, we concluded that the ad was misleading.

The regulator told TalkTalk that the advert must not appear again in its current form. ®