ASA Upholds Six Paid-social Ad Rulings, Including a 'Closing Sunday' Sale With No Closing Date

The Advertising Standards Authority published six upheld rulings on Wednesday 14 October, and every one of them concerns a paid ad on social media. The advertisers are Chart Prime Trading, Finelo, HRY Games trading as AI Scorecast, JPD Retail trading as Harrison & James, Proud & Free, and Unicorn Brands trading as Nutrition Geeks. Eight further advertisers, including Gymshark, EE and Jet2.com, had a complaint resolved informally the same day; the ASA's list does not say what the complaints were.

The 'closing Sunday' shop with no closing date

The most detailed ruling is against Harrison & James. A paid static YouTube ad showed a jewellery shop window with a poster reading 'CLOSING SUNDAY – EVERYTHING FREE', and the landing page said 'After 46 years, we're closing our doors', with customers paying only shipping. The ASA found three problems. There was no fixed closing date, so 'closing Sunday' was misleading. The UK delivery charge was £13.95 when the ads were seen, with no evidence it reflected the unavoidable cost of delivery, and it later rose to £23.95, so 'free' was misleading. And the page's '4.7/5 | 2540+ reviews' did not match a Trustpilot profile showing 4.1 from 1,662 reviews on 4 August; the testimonials carried 'hours ago' timestamps while the Trustpilot reviews supplied were dated May 2026.

The ASA ruled that the ads must not appear again in that form, and cited CAP Code rules 3.1, 3.7, 3.23, 3.23.2, 3.30, 3.44 and 3.47. Proud & Free, which used the same closing-down and free-shipping device on a Facebook ad seen in June, did not respond to the ASA and was referred to CAP Compliance, according to the ruling.

The other four

• Nutrition Geeks: a Facebook image with superimposed text and a before-and-after drawing was found to make unauthorised health claims about muscle and body shape.
• AI Scorecast: a Facebook video ad whose voiceover claimed 97% accuracy and 'six matches all correct' was found misleading and socially irresponsible, after being flagged through the ASA's active ad monitoring.
• Chart Prime Trading and Finelo: paid social ads, upheld.

What it means for whoever makes the ad

• Anything on screen that reads as a fact, such as a closing date, a price, a free offer, a review count or a star rating, needs evidence before it is shot, not after the complaint.
• Testimonials need to be genuine, and a graphic of a review is a claim.
• Before-and-after body imagery and numeric performance claims are a claims risk in their own right.

This is a summary of published rulings, not legal advice. Our guides to shooting paid social video ads and creator and UGC-style ad shoots cover where a claims check fits into a shoot day.