The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has today upheld several separate complaints against magazine and radio based adverts for broadband ISPs PlusNet (radio ad failed to mention that their price was dependent on location) and Virgin Media UK (misleadingly claimed to be the "best for online gaming" with its 50Mbps package).



Virgin Media's advert is perhaps the most interesting of the two because the ASA used Ofcom's latest broadband ISP speeds report (here) to identify that "on average across the whole day and during peak times, Virgin’s 50Mbit/s service had higher upstream jitter than all other services, aside from their own 20Mbit/s service".

Jitter is perhaps better known as lag to gamers. In its defence Virgin blamed PC Gaming magazine's editorial team, which created the promotion and "was not cleared under their usual procedure".

The somewhat toothless advertising watchdog warned both providers that their ads "must not appear again in their current form" (i.e. banned). As usual the related promotions occurred during the spring and early summer, which makes today's ban practically meaningless.