Moneysavingexpert.com's Martin Lewis Warns UK Advertising Sector to Stamp Out Scam Ads

The founder of consumer advice website Moneysavingexpert.com, Martin Lewis, is warning the digital advertising industry that it must regulate and reduce scam advertising before consumer trust in ad messages reaches new lows. Lewis, a familiar face on British screens as a consumer expert offering advice on how to save on energy bills and credit card loans, is campaigning after he found his image was used without permission on ads in 2018, which he claimed conned people out of thousands of pounds. “Scam ads are a monumental problem, I always call it an epidemic because the number of them is phenomenal,” Lewis told Adweek, outlining the lack of police action in catching those responsible. He believes there needs to be an effort to “shut down their access to the public” instead. “The volume of scammers is so big and the danger is so manifest," he said. "I am very close to starting to say to people, ‘you simply cannot trust any online advertising’. The industry needs to recognize that unless advertisers put pressure on the people with whom they run their adverts, to make sure that systems are cleaner and better, then what you'll have is a dilution of trust … The answer is to be skeptical of all of them.” The scam advertising epidemic Lewis, alongside several other public figures, is calling on Boris Johnson to include paid-for scam advertising within his Online Safety Bill—which aims to introduce obligations on companies to keep their users safe—and recognize the creation of such ads criminally. Other celebrities who signed the letter to Johnson include: Virgin Group founder Sir Richard Branson, Dragons' Den entrepreneurs Deborah Meaden, Duncan Bannatyne and Peter Jones, comedians Rob Brydon, Dawn French and Bradley Walsh, survivalist Bear Grylls, TV presenters Lorraine Kelly, Davina McCall, Phillip Schofield and Holly Willoughby and singer Robbie Williams. It's a matter Lewis has a personal stake in. In 2019, he settled a lawsuit with Facebook for defamation after he found that over 1,000 ads served by the platform had abused his name and image on the site. The company paid £3 million and costs to Lewis, which he donated to a charity set up to tackle the problem of scam ads. Subsequently, Facebook also announced that it would create a reporting tool, unique to the U.K. alongside a dedicated team that would aim to prevent future scam ads from running. How Britain’s ASA Is Embracing Tech to Keep Pace With Misleading Ads and Digital Scammers Technology is not the solution Earlier this year, U.K. ad watchdog the Advertising Standard’s Authority (ASA) said it was investing in dedicated technology and partnering with media platforms to prevent phoney adverts from reaching the public. “By making big tech responsible as publishers for what they are paid to publish then you have an opportunity to reduce the criminal’s access to the public,” Lewis agreed. However, Lewis dismissed the idea of using technology as a solution and said that platforms, should employ teams of people to prevent the ads from running manually. Unless advertisers put pressure on the people with whom they run their adverts, to make sure that systems are cleaner and better, then what you'll have is a dilution of trust.Martin Lewis, Moneysavingexpert.com founder “We have to be very careful not to allow this to be painted as a technological problem," he said. "This is a problem of process and if technology won't do it, and then don't do it with technology, do it with person power.”Lewis has held meetings with government officials on the topic, but could not share more details. He said he has cross-party support from politicians and within the House of Lords to include his proposal in the Online Safety Bill. “I'm not going to let this go without a fight," he said. "The problem with the structure of this is that the government is going to regulate user-generated scams within the Bill, but not scam adverts. And the natural result when you have confident, savvy criminals, is that will simply mean a shift of some of their resources more towards adverts and away from user-generated. The net result is that the Bill will encourage scam adverts, not deter them. So, we have a real problem.” Facebook Rolled Out a Tool in the U.K. for Users to Report Scam Advertising