APEC Ad Standards Forum and Mentoring Workshop in Beijing

11 August 2014

A successful APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation) Ad Standards Forum and Mentoring Workshop held as part of APEC’s Senior Officials Meeting (SOM) in Beijing on 8-9 August.

The Forum and Workshop were jointly hosted by the Chinese Association of National Advertisers (CANA) and the Australian Advertising Standards Bureau (ASB). The ASB has led EASA’s work in the region and organised the first APEC Ad Standards Dialogue in 2012

The meetings were aimed at providing a forum for discussion on ad standards and regulations. They brought together representatives 16 APEC Economies, self-regulatory organisations (SROs) from across EASA’s network, and global industry partners, including the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA) and the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC). EASA’s Director General moderated the session on “Working together to achieve fair competition and sound business environment – Compliance and the role of Governments”.

Following the forum and workshop, the APEC Action Agenda on advertising standards was approved by both the Committee for Trade and Investment (CTI) and the Senior Officials Meeting. At SOM the China’s Director General of Trade specifically thanked all economies and private partners for their contribution to the work and the SOM Chair, Vice Minister Li Baodong, also specifically stated this work as being endorsed in his summary of the SOM morning session. 

APEC has focused on the importance of promoting regulatory convergence in the field of advertising standards across the 21 APEC markets to not only ensure responsible advertising content but to incentivise foreign investment and promote trade by making it easier for companies to do business in multiple markets across the region through the removal of unnecessary barriers to trade. 

For an analysis of APEC’s work on ad standards read this article by WFA’s Will Gilroy here.