Not long after the inception of the ASA the Molony Committee considered but rejected proposals to introduce a system to regulate the advertising industry by statute.

A guarded comment within the report, however, warned that the self-regulatory system depended upon the satisfactory working of the ASA and the maintaining of acceptable standards.

In November 2004, control of the regulation of broadcast advertising, formerly undertaken by state bodies, was handed over to the ASA on a provisional two-year contract.

The only cases where the ASA might ask the complainant for their permission to be named relate to complaints that a consumer has not yet received goods or wishes to be removed from a marketer's database.

If the complaint comes from a competitor or someone with a trade or vested interest with the advertiser about which they are complaining, the ASA requires the company to agree to be named.

Once the investigation is complete, a draft recommendation is sent to both the advertiser and the original complainant for any comments, with a request to keep this confidential until publication of the final report.

The draft recommendation is then submitted to the independent Advertising Standards Authority Council, which adjudicates on ASA investigations.

For example, the ASA told French Connection UK Ltd, which makes the FCUK branded clothing, to have all its advertisements pre-vetted by the CAP Copy Advice team.

Trading Standards officers have statutory powers to apply a wide range of sanctions, including prosecution or other legal action.

[11] Broadcasters have ultimate responsibility for advertisements shown on their channels and are therefore directly answerable to Ofcom, their licensing authority.

Apple has been involved in two major rulings by the ASA; its claim to be selling "the world's fastest personal computer" in 2004, its Power Mac G5 system, was judged to be unsubstantiated.

[14] Later, in August 2008, an advertisement for the iPhone was banned because of false claims that it could access "all of the Internet"—due to its lack of support of major plug-ins such as Flash.

Religious groups including Christian Voice had complained that the Atheist Bus Campaign broke the advertising code on the grounds of substantiation and truthfulness.

The ASA said that the British Humanist Association's campaign did not breach the advertising code or mislead consumers and that it therefore would not launch an investigation.

Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Jews for Justice for Palestinians and 442 members of the public complained about how the map on the poster displayed the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and the Golan Heights as part of Israel.

[21] In 2011, two additional makeup ads for L'Oréal's were banned after British Liberal Democrat politician Jo Swinson lodged complaints about ads for foundation products made by L'Oréal-owned brands, Lancôme and Maybelline, featuring actress Julia Roberts and supermodel Christy Turlington.

It ruled that the two ads breached advertising standards code for exaggeration and for being misleading, and banned them from future publication.

[22] In March 2011, 3GA's advertisements for a digital jukebox known as the Brennan JB7, which can import content from CDs and cassette tapes, were found to be in violation of ASA guidelines for glorifying illegal acts, because it implied that it was acceptable to rip music, since "[it] repeatedly made reference to the benefits of the product being able to copy music but did not make clear that it was illegal to do so without the permission of the copyright owner".

[24][25] In January 2013, 3GA was also found to be in non-compliance in another set of ads for the JB7 which promoted an optional dock for attaching an MP3 player such as an iPod.