In the UK, a magazine advertisement for prominent online poker room PartyPoker.com has fallen foul of the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) watchdog for presenting ‘misleading’ survey claims.
The print ad in question featured a headline that contained the claim ‘Players Win More At PartyPoker’ alongside text in the body copy that read ‘Play for a $2m guaranteed prize pool…find out why more people love to win at PartyPoker.com’. Following this copy, there was an asterisk that linked to small print reading ‘Poker Players Research Ltd Opinion Poll, May 08, Sample size 10,000’.
A single complainant challenged whether the two claims in the advertisement were misleading and could be substantiated while PartyGaming Marketing (Gibraltar) countered by stating that the assertions were based on the results of a survey carried out in May of 2008 by independent research firm Poker Player Research Limited.
However, the ASA upheld both complaints and stated that the headline ‘Players Win More At PartyPoker’ was a ‘factual claim capable of objective substantiation’.
“We noted the ad stated ‘Play for a $2m guaranteed prize pool…’ and considered that readers were likely to infer that they could win more money playing at PartyPoker.com than at other sites,” read the ASA judgement.
“We considered that readers were likely to interpret the claim ‘…more people love to win at PartyPoker.com’ as a subjective one that was based on the expression of the poll participants’ opinion.
“We considered that readers were likely to infer that the survey had shown that PartyPoker.com was the most popular of the sites included in the survey. We noted the survey respondents had not been asked to name their preferred or favourite site. Because we had not seen evidence to support the likely interpretation of the claim, we concluded that it could mislead.”
The ASA ruled that the ad must not appear again in its current form while PartyGaming revealed that it planned to make use of the survey findings until these were superseded by new research.
