Kia and Dettol ads top complaints list for 2025

As far as I'm concerned, ads that receive complaints are often times more interesting than others, maybe worth watching even

The article does mention, and I think it's worth remembering, that AdStandards is an industry self-regulatory organisation. They can't actually do shit. They call them a regulator, but they don't have any real power. They don't do anything proactively, can't issue fines or legally-backed takedown notices, and their "rules" only apply to members of the AANA. Besides a lot of "we have investigated ourselves and found no misconduct" situations, this means the socmed ads mentioned in the article are functionally unaffected, because the businesses aren't members. Even members can just refuse breach notices. It mostly exists as a place where consumer complaints go to die.

Use adblockers. At least the internet would be clean from this ad-shit.

Most of these ads are traditional media, particularly TV. And for live sport, you often have to choose between TV with its ads, or paying money directly to Murdoch.
- sport
  I stopped watching sport years ago. I used to watch the footy every weekend. Summer tv was cricket. I rang a tv station once as a kid infuriated because I had been watching golf all day and they cut away just as the competition was being decided. Now all sport is tainted by gambling, overpaid and obnoxious personalities, and too much commercialism. I don't know who plays for the teams I used to follow. I don't care anymore.
  All my browsers are ad-blocked. I sometimes pay subscriptions to remove ads. I was time shifting for a few years to ad skip commercial tv but there was better content in higher quality on bittorrent, then streaming and now I don't bother plugging an aerial into tvs or tuning the channels.
  Perhaps one day the ad market will collapse and sport will move back to the public broadcasters where it was before people worked out how to ruin it with money. Until then I can live without it.
- Sports fans could learn something from gamers: there is such a thing as "patient gaming" when you don't buy a game as soon as possible but wait until all bugs are cleaned out, DLCs are released, etc. Wait a year and you will get the game you want for significantly lower price, and the game itself will be polished as it should be. In the case of sports, it wouldn't take a year, more likely a few days until you will be able to get a record without ads, with the best commentary and points of view. The situation with prices and ads won't change until you force it to change "with wallet".

“Lower entry costs” …“without the appropriate understanding”.

They need to be fined for inappropriate content to increase entry costs.

This will make advertising firms valuable again for accountablilty.

AdStandards can't issue fines or force those ads offline. I think that might be ACMA territory.