• Home
  • About Us
  • Contact
  • Advertise
  • Awards
  • Privacy Policy
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • RSS
TheDomains.com

UK Bans 1and1.com New gTLD Commercials As Being “Misleading”

December 19, 2013 by Michael Berkens

lg-1and1

 

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA)  which is the independent regulator of advertising across all media the United Kingdom has just banned 1and1.com new gTLD television commercials as being misleading.

A television commercial similar to the one 1and1.com was running in the United States, was also running in the UK.

The ASA applies the Advertising Codes, which are written by the Committees of Advertising Practice. Our work includes acting on complaints and proactively checking the media to take action against misleading, harmful or offensive advertisements.

In an administrative ruling the ASA found that the Television commercials of 1and1.com on the new gTLD was misleadingly.

“The ASA noted the ad invited consumers to choose from over 700 new domains and to pre-order those domains. ”

“Whilst we considered consumers would understand the reference to ‘pre-order’ to mean that the domain names were not currently available, we considered they would understand the ad to mean that they could place an order with 1&1 Internet that would secure their chosen domain name when it became available. ”

“However, we understood that that was not the case and that upon receipt of a pre-order, 1&1 Internet would pass on the customer’s request to the relevant domain name registry, who would apply their own allocation process when the requested domain name became available. ”

“We therefore considered the presentation of the ad was likely to mislead. ”

“On that basis, we concluded that the ad breached the Code.”

The ruling means the ad cannot run again in the UK in its current form.

I hate to say I told you so but i did back on September 22nd right after the commercials started airing.

Hat Tip: Adam Grunwerg ‏@AffiliateFYI

Filed Under: New gTLD's

About Michael Berkens

Michael Berkens, Esq. is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of TheDomains.com. Michael is also the co-founder of Worldwide Media Inc. which sold around 70K domain to Godaddy.com in December 2015 and now owns around 8K domain names . Michael was also one of the 5 Judges selected for the the Verisign 30th Anniversary .Com contest.

« .Fail! ChicagoGrid.com Says Berryhill Runs the Domains & .Chicago, .Jeans & .XXX Are Coming
Indonesia will roll out shorter .id Domains Next Year »

Comments

  1. JNet says

    December 19, 2013 at 8:48 am

    Hooray !!! …. Finally a ” Much Needed” sober dose of justice & logic to this annoying & dubious cyber avalanche proliferating all over the place

  2. jose says

    December 19, 2013 at 9:16 am

    they should be blocked from doing business at all! the most shady company in our industry

  3. Domainer Extraordinaire says

    December 19, 2013 at 10:28 am

    Good thing they still have all of the US to be deceptive in.

  4. Jeff Schneider says

    December 19, 2013 at 4:37 pm

    Hello MHB,

    Thanks for covering this for your readerships sake. Other gTLD censoring will be coming to our shores soon.

    ” The Coming Domain Registrar Bubble Collapse ”

    ” Excessive Supply Tinges All Old, and New Market Bubbles ”

    No matter how many early warning signs appear, the froth in registrars and their hot stories that are always tied to .COM Franchise successes continue to inflate the excessive oversupply of both registrars and new uneeded extensions.No matter how Hot the promotional bluster, history shows that :Those that spot the overheating and divest, walk away before the Bubble bursts.Thereby transfering the bag holding to someone else. Domainers and End-users BEWARE; These current (Red Flag) Market Fundamental Underpinnings are now firmly in place. The coming Mash-Ups and Collisions caused by the gTLD experiment, will cause a massive flight of Online business owners to the Safety and Reliability of the .COM Franchise Marketing Model. Much as the Derivatives debacle of 07 sent investors to the safety and reliability of the treasury markets. (Flight To Safety)
    “Without question, the gTLD experiment will expand the .COM Franchise Usage and its Channel Traffic Patterns, INEXORABLY JAS 12/19/13 ”

    Gratefully, Jeff Schneider (Contact Group) (Metal Tiger)

  5. Grim says

    December 20, 2013 at 1:11 am

    Domainer Extraordinaire wrote:
    > “Good thing they still have all of the US to be deceptive in.”

    That’s okay. 99.274% of the people in the US either don’t care or have no idea what the ad is talking about, anyway.


Recent Articles

  • Jimmy Wales co-founder of Wikipedia to be in person at NamesCon
  • Sedo weekly domain name sales led by Vital.io
  • Identity Digital Domain Trend Report: February 2023

Recent Comments

  • Ben on Jimmy Wales co-founder of Wikipedia to be in person at NamesCon
  • John's Web on Jimmy Wales co-founder of Wikipedia to be in person at NamesCon
  • Perfectname.com Sales on Sedo weekly domain name sales led by Giveaway.com
  • AbdulBasit Makrani on Sedo weekly domain name sales led by Giveaway.com
  • Baird on GoDaddy Launches Payable Domains

Categories

Archives

Copyright ©2022 TheDomains.com — Published by Worldwide Media, Inc. — Site by Nuts and Bolts Media