An investigation by the UK advertising watchdog has found a number of shocking ads in mobile gaming apps that depict women as sexual objects, use pornographic tropes, and feature non-consensual sexual scenarios involving “violent and coercive control”.
The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) used avatars, which mimic the browsing behaviour of different gender and age groups, to monitor ads served when mobile games are open and identify breaches of the UK code.
While most of the thousands of promotions served to the avatars complied with UK rules, the watchdog identified and banned eight that featured “shocking” content that portrayed women in a harmful way.
Two ads promoting an artificial intelligence chatbot app, Linky: Chat With Characters AI, began with a woman dressed in a manga T-shirt, a short skirt and large bunny ears dancing in a bedroom with text reading: “Tell me which bf [boyfriend] I should break up with.”
The ad moved on to animated content featuring text conversations with three manga-style young men. They were variously described as “obsessively possessive”, “aggressively jealous”, “a kidnapper and a killer”. Further text described yanking the woman “into the car, swiftly knocking her out”, with the woman asking: “What if I enjoy this?”
The ASA said the ad was “suggestive and implied scenarios involving violent and coercive control and a lack of consent”.
An ad for an interactive romance story game called My Fantasy featured an animation of a woman being approached by another woman and being pushed on to a desk. Options appeared asking what she should do – “enjoy it”, “push her away”, “please continue” and “stop it”.
The ASA said the animations were “strongly suggestive and implied the sexual encounters were not consensual”.
The ASA also identified three ads for Love Sparks: Dating Sim, which were shown to its female child and adult male avatars. One ad showed an animated woman lying on her back with her legs spread, with the options “kiss her” and “take it slow”.
The second ad featured sexually suggestive depictions of “Kate your naughty step sister” wearing a bra, and an animated image of “Lally, 18”.
The third ad featured an animated clothed woman with her bottom pulsating with the options “next girl” and “slap”, as well as text reading “punish me … please”.
The ASA said that in the ads the women were shown as “stereotypical sexual objects using tropes from pornography”.
The watchdog banned the eight ads and issued a warning to those behind them. It said that although they were rare examples out of the 5,923 adverts served to its digital avatars, the “harmful or degrading portrayals of women in ads are completely unacceptable and we take a zero-tolerance approach to this kind of content”.
The ASA also published findings of a study that found that almost half of UK consumers were concerned about the depiction and objectification of women and girls in ads.
The survey of 6,500 people, conducted by YouGov, found that 45% of people were concerned about ads that include idealised body images of women. It found 44% were concerned about the objectification of women and girls.
Last month, the ASA banned an advert from the high street retailer Next for featuring an “unhealthily thin” model in digitally altered clothing.
The survey marks the latest initiative in this area by the ASA since it introduced tougher rules regarding the depiction of men and women in ads in 2019.
The new rules were developed after a consultation process partly prompted by the outcry over adverts in 2015 for the slimming product Protein World, which promised to make women “beach body ready”.
