SMS and online ads draw record complaints

Online adverts make up half the complaints to the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA), the watchdog announced in its annual report.

The report, which analysed the complaints made last year, found that complaints about email advertising have skyrocketed – from a mere 17 complaints in 2002 to 450 last year. That's a rather large increase of 2500 per cent.

The ASA puts its new spam laws – requiring users to explicitly opt-in to receive email advertising – as the chief reason for the increase.

They may also want to look at the accompanying rise in email spam itself. Last month, according to mail-filtering firm Brightmail, spam represented 63 per cent of all email sent. About the same time the previous year, in April 2003, it was 46 per cent.

Text messages also got those who received them foaming at the mouth. The number of complaints in that area rose by 500 per cent, up from 2002's 65 to 2003's 393.

The type of text ad that merited the most ire was misleading texts for premium rate services that told the mobile phone user they had won a prize and, to claim their booty, all they had to do was ring a premium rate number.

Unsurprisingly, none of the complainants ever saw any fabulous holidays or big cash prizes turn up.

The year also brought a first for the ASA – with voicemail advertising breaking its duck and getting recipients hot under the collar. A voicemail promotion for the Tom Cruise vehicle Minority Report was found by the ASA to have perplexed those who got it by not fessing up to actually being an ad, causing "confusing and distress among several recipients", the ASA said.

Still, despite the 2500 per cent rise, online and mobile advertisers should still be able to sleep at night. The total number of complaints about advertising was 14,277 – putting the measly 450 rants about online into perspective.