Compliance
Rulings and research
What the ASA has ruled against in 2026, what its research says about how people read these ads, and how closely it is watching.
February 2026: affiliates, creators and referral codes
The brand is responsible for posts made on its behalf, including by customers.
On 11 February 2026 the ASA upheld 13 complaints about public posts on Instagram, TikTok and Facebook that promoted weight loss injections with discount codes and referral links for Voy, Zava, MedExpress and UK Meds Direct. The posts named medicines, showed injection pens, used hashtags and encouraged followers to start a weight loss “journey”.
What the rulings established:
- A post made for a reward is an ad. A discount code, a referral link, commission or free product is enough. It does not matter whether the poster is an influencer or an ordinary customer.
- Both parties are responsible. Where a brand runs the scheme and controls the codes, the brand answers for the post.
- A site wide code is no defence. Zava argued its codes applied to everything it sold. The ASA still upheld the complaint, because the post referred to a prescription medicine.
- Refer a friend schemes are affiliate schemes. Voy’s was treated as one. UK Meds Direct closed its influencer programme and switched off refer a friend for prescription products.
Affiliate marketing is not a loophole.
October 2026: ads that never name the medicine
Two rulings worth reading in full, because the wording is close to things weight loss brands say every day.
On 7 October 2026 the ASA ruled against Juniper, MedExpress and the Care Pharmacy for promoting prescription only medicines without naming them. In each case the ASA relied on its consumer research and advice from the MHRA, and concluded that a significant minority of people would read the cues together as meaning a prescription medicine was on offer.
| Advertiser | The ad | What the ASA objected to |
|---|---|---|
| Juniper | A paid Google search ad headed “50% Off: Limited Time Offer 6 Month Price Lock All Doses In Stock”, with links to “Weight Loss Medication” and “Now Just £21.25 Per Week”. No imagery in the ad itself. | “All Doses In Stock”, “Weight Loss Medication”, “No GP or pharmacy visits, just a quick online consultation” and “Lose Up To 23% Of Your Body Weight. Reduce Cravings & Regulate Appetite”. The pages the ad led to showed injection pens and a branded medicine. Juniper’s argument that several pages sat between the ad and any medicine was rejected: the journey as a whole was the ad. |
| MedExpress | A paid Facebook ad showing a woman taking a slim MedExpress box from a pile of vegetables. “Helps silence food noise”, then “Reduces food noise”, “Controls your cravings” and “Helps you feel fuller for longer”. | The appetite and craving claims, which the ASA noted are licensed only for prescription medicines. The ad led through an age gate that named a medicine to a page showing two branded pens. |
Phrases now on the record as pointing at a prescription medicine
- Reducing cravings, regulating appetite, silencing or reducing “food noise”, feeling fuller for longer
- Significant or precise weight loss figures, such as “lose up to 23% of your body weight”
- “All doses in stock”, “price lock”, prices per week or per pen
- “No GP or pharmacy visits, just a quick online consultation”
- “Weight loss medication” as the thing on offer
October 2026: the first oral medicine rulings
New formats are under the same rules, from the day a medicine is announced.
The same day, the ASA published its first rulings on oral GLP-1 medicines. Simple Online Pharmacy had invited people to “join the waitlist” for a new oral weight management treatment on 1 June, ten days before the first such tablet was licensed. Pharmacy Online ran a website pop up inviting people to “pre-order” the oral tablet and paid social ads for it after it was licensed.
- Before a medicine is licensed it cannot be promoted at all, and no medicinal claims can be made for it. A waiting list is promotion.
- Once it is licensed as prescription only, it cannot be advertised to the public. “Pre-order” is advertising.
- Format makes no difference. A joint ASA, MHRA and GPhC warning on 18 June 2026 said that naming these products, or using terms such as “GLP-1 tablets”, “oral GLP-1s” or “the new weight-loss tablets”, is likely to breach the Code, including where a waiting list is being advertised.
Stimulating consumer demand for a new prescription medicine is not permitted.
Catherine Drewett of the ASA said the rulings “make clear that these oral medicines, like prescription-only injections, cannot be advertised to the public”, and that the ASA will keep monitoring ads and emerging trends with the MHRA and the GPhC.
How people read these ads
The ASA’s own research is now cited in its rulings, so its findings are effectively part of the rules.
In March 2026 the ASA published research by MTM into how the public interprets weight loss ads. A survey of 2,000 UK adults, a five day online community of 30 and ten follow up interviews tested 35 real ads from Meta, Google, TikTok, Reddit and TV, plus six of the landing pages behind them.
| Finding | Detail |
|---|---|
| People do not need a name | Across the 12 ads in the survey, 10% of people spontaneously said the ad was for weight loss injections, rising to 29% when prompted. For individual ads the figure ranged from 9% to 69%. |
| Six signals, read together | Imagery (pens, boxes, injection visuals), language (drug names, what the product is called), product information (how it works, pricing, jargon), effectiveness claims (significant or fast weight loss), the approach (clinical versus holistic) and the provider behind the ad. One signal rarely decides it. A combination does. |
| The strongest cues | Across every group: pen imagery, explicit language, references to BMI eligibility, and weight loss statistics that felt significant or extreme. |
| Our audience sees more | People who had used or would consider injections were far more likely to spot them in an ad, because they have more reference points. They are exactly who we talk to. |
| Purchase, not consultation | 44% felt the ad was pushing them to buy. 22% felt it was inviting them to check eligibility with a professional. Prices, transactional language and perceived pressure drove the first reading. |
| Pressure and vulnerability | 65% agreed weight loss ads put pressure on people to lose weight, and 63% that they are often aimed at vulnerable groups. Ads aimed at menopausal and postnatal women drew mixed reactions. |
| Limited knowledge of the rules | Just under half knew GLP-1 injections are prescription only. A third did not know prescription medicines cannot be advertised. |
| What built trust | Landing pages that led with doctors, a tailored programme and ongoing professional support built trust without pointing at injections. Pages that added “injection”, a drug name or a pen made the ad an injection ad in hindsight. |
How closely the ASA is watching
Every paid ad we run is read by a machine, and what it flags is read by a person.
CAP’s enforcement report of 2 April 2026 covers its monitoring of the sector from February 2025 to January 2026.
| Figure | What it is |
|---|---|
| 95,000+ | Paid ads captured from 44 advertisers across Google, Meta, TikTok and display, using the ASA’s AI based Active Ad Monitoring system. |
| 35,000 | Of those, ads for weight management services. |
| 900 | Ads from 38 of the 44 advertisers judged likely to break the rules, mostly by naming a medicine, using “jab” or “GLP-1”, or showing branded pens. |
| 7% to 1% | The share of likely breaches, from the start of monitoring to after the September 2025 notice. It was 4% after the April notice. |
| 99% | Compliance with the notice among monitored paid ads by January 2026. |
| 46 | Advertisers contacted and told to amend or withdraw ads. All but one gave assurances. The one that did not respond was referred to the GPhC. |
The ASA says the remaining risk sits in content it does not pay to see, especially influencer and affiliate posts, and in “grey area” tactics such as promotional pricing. It has published 18 rulings on these services since 2025 and says it will keep monitoring as the market changes.