An interesting development from the advertising sector now.

The Advertising Standards Authority will expand its remit to cover all forms of online advertising. The ASA, which regulates advertising on TV and radio, in print media, and on billboards, does already oversee some online communications, ie banner and text adverts bought on other people's websites.

However, the new development - which is supported by ad industry trade body the Advertising Association - will see ASA regulation extended to advertising content published on companies' own websites, and on their social media pages, such as Facebook profiles and Twitter feeds.

Such online activity will now have to meet ASA rules regarding all advertising messages being responsible, legal, honest and truthful. Concerns have been raised that consumers, and especially children, may be misled by company websites and social media pages which have not previously been open to active regulation.

It's an interesting development because those communication outputs are sometimes managed by marketing or even PR people, rather than advertising execs, meaning the ASA's remit is extending into other communication sectors.

The move will have to be approved by the Committee For Advertising Practice, which feeds into the ASA, but given the Advertising Association is already a supporter most seem to think that approval will be forthcoming.

Channel Five, or Five as they insist on being known, have secured a number of big names from the US TV shows they air to appear in a new ad campaign for the network.

Taking a leaf of Channel 4's book – who have also incorporated actors from the US shows they air in their channel-wide marketing – the likes of Joseph Fiennes, Gary Sinise, Laurence Fishburne, Simon Baker, Mark Harmon and Marg Helgenberger will all appear in the new LA-filmed adverts. Between them those actors represent Five aired shows like 'The Mentalist', 'Flash Forward', 'NCIS' and various versions of the 'CSI' franchise.

The trailer is called The Drama Continues and will premiere on Five itself tonight. The network says it is the first time that rival US TV studios Warner Bros, CBS and ABC have all agreed to allow their stars to appear in the same trailer in this way.

Edinburgh based investment management firm Baillie Gifford has announced it will sponsor no less than seven literary festivals around the UK, including the one in its home city that takes place during Edinburgh's main August festival season. The finance outfit's literary associations will begin with the Bath Literature Festival which kicks off next weekend. Other events to benefit from the sponsorship programme include literary festivals in Cheltenham and Windsor.

Baillie Gifford marketing chief James Budden said he thought the (normally aging) audience found at literary festivals would be the right demographic for his company, while adding that he believed there was a "correlation" between "the diligence and imagination that successful writers bring to the creative process and what we bring to investments here at Baillie Gifford".

Oh, the complicated rules regarding sponsorship on British television, which insist the branded idents that run before sponsored shows on commercial TV stations are clearly not part of the programme, but at the same time clearly not a conventional advert.

Sky are pissed off with media regulator OfCom, who have just ruled that idents used by Currys as part of its sponsorship of 'The Simpsons' on Sky1 are too like adverts to be inline with the rules. The problem is that the spot specifically advertised some of the electronics chain's services, rather than just saying "Currys pays cash to be associated with 'The Simpsons'" or something similar.

Sky are annoyed because they say they ran the spots by OfCom before they put them on air and initially got the all clear. But the regulator says the idents clearly breach their rules, while adding that anything they may have said about the sponsorship spots before they actually aired can only be considered "general guidance", because they will only ever formally rule on such things once something is actually on TV. Which seems a bit silly when a broadcaster specifically asks for advice, but there you go.

OfCom said in a statement: "[We do] not accept Sky's view that, in advance of transmission, Ofcom had 'confirmed that the [idents] were compliant'. Ofcom is a post-transmission regulator and has always made clear to its licensees that it does not offer pre-transmission clearance or compliance approval".

Homer Simpson was unavailable for comment.

Culture Secretary Ben Bradshaw last week confirmed that the government will allow product placement on British TV shows for the first time.

As previously reported, the government announced last year that it planned to allow commercial broadcasters to generate new revenues by charging brands to have a subtle presence within TV programmes. Unlike in the US and many other European countries, such paid-for brand exposure has been banned on British television until now.

Broadcasters like ITV hope the relaxation in product placement rules will provide a valuable new revenue stream to help compensate for the fall in traditional TV advertising income. Though some critics reckon that many advertisers will be cautious about embracing placement in case of a public backlash towards brand presence in programmes, while others may simply divert money originally pencilled for traditional ad spots to the new opportunities of in-programme exposure.

Confirming that product placement was being given the green light on British TV, albeit with some very specific restrictions, Bradshaw wrote in a ministerial statement earlier this month that the new system would "provide meaningful commercial benefits to commercial television companies and programme-makers while taking account of the legitimate concerns that have been expressed".

ITV welcomed the new rules, despite the broadcaster's management having a problem with some of the restrictions. A spokesman told reporters: "While we do not necessarily agree with the restrictions placed on certain categories, it is a step in the right direction as it will deliver additional revenue for investment in original content in the UK".

The Advertising Standards Authority has criticised the NME for running an ad for fashion house Fly53, which featured a man gripping another guy by the throat and pointing a gun to his head. The cartoony ad was based around Fly53's ongoing shtick of "confessing your fashion crimes".

The brand and the mag denied the ad glamorised gun crime, saying it was aimed at an "educated, creative and intelligent young market" who wouldn't infer any sinister messages from the artwork (NME readers educated, creative and intelligent? Yes, of course they are, you doubters you).

But the ASA said the ad was "aggressive and threatening" and had a "menacing atmosphere" and should never have been published in the music weekly.

An attempt by the Outdoor Advertising Association to prove the power of their ownmedium has been a little too successful, forcing the trade body to pull its own ads.

Members of the OAA, the trade body for the billboard advertising sector, have posted a number of adverts for a website called Britainthinks.com onto the sides of buses and billboard poster sites around the UK. The posters carry deliberately contentious slogans like "educashun isn't working", "1966 - it won't happen this year" and "career women make bad mothers". The ads encourage people to go to the Britainthinks.com website to vote and comment on the remarks in the ads.

While the Britainthinks.com website claims that it's been "created to give people a new voice and support the vibrant democracy that the people of Britain already participate in up and down the country - in the pubs, living rooms and street corners of our nation", in fact the whole thing has been set up by an ad agency called Beta to prove that, despite the growth of digital advertising and viral marketing, traditional posters on a wall (or bus) are capable of attracting consumer attention and generating public debate.

It's the "career women make bad mothers" remark that has proven that is indeed the case, albeit with the help of the increasingly vocal website-for-mothers Mumsnet. Seemingly unaware that the ads were deliberately contentious, or that the whole thing was set up to demonstrate the power of outdoor marketing, Mumsnet readers have been hitting out at the posters this week. According to The Guardian, one reader commented on one of the site's message boards: "The poster I saw on the side of a building today felt like a kick in the stomach".

As outrage grew a spokeswoman for Beta announced its career mum ads would be taken down, partly to appease the outraged, and partly, possibly, because the aim of their campaign has sort of been achieved.

Beta's Sharon Johnson told reporters: "There has been a misunderstanding with an important mothers' forum about this campaign which is about sparking a debate. It is not what the campaign thinks. But rather than offend people the decision has been taken to replace the posters saying 'career women make bad mothers' with other slogans which work just as effectively".

The Advertising Standards Authority has banned an advert for BSkyB's Sky Plus service over allegations it implied that buying the service was the easiest way to cope with the nationwide switch to digital television.

Analogue TV transmissions are slowly being turned off around the UK requiring viewers to upgrade to digital. This means either investing in a Freeview set-top box (or TV with Freeview inbuilt), or opting for a subscription TV service from Sky or Virgin Media.

Sky's most recent ads noted the turn off of analogue TV signals, and featured Sue Johnston, best known as the Mum in 'The Royle Family', saying: "I am a simple soul as far as technology goes, but I can manage Sky+. You just press the button and you can record a whole television series. It's just so simple. I say to everybody who's worrying about going digital, don't worry about it, get a Sky box, then it's done. So I will become digital without feeling any pain at all".

Coming at the same time as government communications explaining the digital switchover, and seemingly aimed at older less tech-savvy TV viewers, the ASA felt some might infer from the ad that Sky offered the simplest solution for going digital, when really Freeview is, if anything, simpler, and the Virgin cable TV system is certainly no more complicated.

In a statement the ASA said that they felt the "ad implied it was necessary to subscribe to those enhanced services in order to switch over to digital TV when that was not the case" adding that they concluded the ad "was likely to mislead on those grounds".

The Incorporated Society of British Advertisers, a trade body that spends most of its time trying to reduce government regulation of the UK advertising sector, has come out against the British government's proposals to allow commercially-based product placement on certain television programmes. Which means that when it comes to the long-held regulations banning the practice in the UK, the ISBA would rather they stay.

UK ministers announced last year plans to allow commercial TV companies to charge brands for the privilege of having their products subtly incorporated into television shows, so that characters in soap operas or sitcoms might be seen to use or eat or drink or buy certain products in return for the makers of said products paying a fee. The proposals are currently being reviewed by the UK government's Department Of Culture, Media & Sport.

The practice is already allowed in many other countries, and commercial broadcasters in the UK - who have seen ad revenues slump in recent years - have been busy pushing for a relaxation of product placement rules for some time. While the government's proposals would limit product placement to certain kinds of TV shows, media regulator OfCom has estimated the proposals could open up £35 million in new income for the ITVs, Channel 4s and Skys of this world.

In theory the relaxed rules would benefit advertisers also, who, in an age of TV-on-demand and Sky-plus-style fast-forward live TV systems, find it increasingly difficult to persuade viewers to sit through their adverts. But the ISBA has come out against the proposals, mainly because British advertisers fear it will result in an expensive price tag being applied to a service that is currently free.

That is to say, a sort of product placement already exists in the UK, whereby brands can get some limited exposure within TV shows by providing goods to programme makers for free, thereby reducing those producer's production costs. Because TV networks cannot charge for such in-programme exposure, product placement in the UK has become a 'contra-deal' arrangement between product maker and product placer.

While this kind of product placement has to be very subtle, the ISBA reckon that product placement under the new rules would also have to be very low key, partly to satisfy the rules themselves, and partly to ensure there is no serious backlash from viewers. Therefore, the ISBA conclude, all that will happen with the new system is that TV companies will be able to start charging high fees for a service advertisers currently enjoy for free.

According to The Guardian, the ISBA says in a submission to the DCMS: "We are very concerned that the combination of overly optimistic revenue expectations and formalisation of this market might lead to attempts, particularly by broadcasters, to close off low-cost prop placement in order to drive advertisers into more expensive paid product placement in programmes under their control".

The submission warns: "Any such resultant increase in the cost to advertisers of paid product placement would result in an increase in their expectation as to the prominence of products thus placed, leading to an increased likelihood of viewer disenfranchisement and, in turn, complaint".

The British Medical Association has also made a submission to the DCMS opposing the proposed relaxed product placement rules. Their viewpoint is no surprise - presumably they don't want the public's favourite TV characters to be seen guzzling brand name crisps and sweets and alcohol. The ISBA's stand point, while understandable, is more interesting, however, given the trade body were pro relaxed product placement rules when they were last considered by the government three years ago.

The new ad-funded download store based in Australia - Guvera - is set to launch in its home territory in time for Christmas. McDonald's, Mountain Dew, Domino's Pizza, Bacardi, Slush Puppie, Activision, Schweppes and Johnson & Johnson are reportedly on board as brand sponsors.

Ads won't be attached to songs, rather each brand will have their own channel on the Guvera website. Apparently you'll fill out a quick form, and be directed to a relevant brand's page where you can download a certain number of tracks. When you reach your quota of, say, Maccy D-funded downloads, you can opt for a different brand's channel. Presumably the brands hope to buy some consumer love by giving you some free tunes.

The brands will cover the royalty costs associated with the free downloads. Both Universal and EMI will be providing tracks at launch.

B2B publisher Haymarket is restructuring its titles aimed at the marketing and advertising industries, a move which will see the closure of one magazine and the significant downsizing of another. Media Week, aimed mainly at those on the media-buying side of the advertising industry, will close after almost 25 years in business. Revolution, which covers digital marketing and internet-based media, will become a quarterly supplement inside sister title Marketing. It's thought both titles will retain their websites and accompanying award events.

Unlike PR Week, which serves the more clearly defined corporate communications sector, there has always been some crossover between those Haymarket magazines aimed at the marketing and advertising sectors – Marketing, Campaign, Media Week and Revolution.

The restructure is expected to result in just one editorial team covering the wider marketing and advertising industries, creating content for the print-based Marketing and Campaign magazines, and the Marketing, Campaign, Media Week and Revolution websites. They will also continue to feed in content to the Brand Republic website, which aggregates content from all of Haymarket's marketing titles as well as the more autonomous PR Week. 

Haymarket has begun a consultation with staff on the restructure, which is expected to result in 18 job losses.

An interesting development over in the advertising sector now. The UK's Advertising Standard's Authority will extend its remit and start policing online advertising activities thanks to a deal with Google.

The advertising industry's regulatory body has been interested in having a more proactive role in overseeing online marketing for a while now, especially so called 'search advertising'. But the body is funded by the industry it regulates, and has so far struggled to agree with key players in online advertising, in particular US-based Google, how its regulation of their part of the industry should be paid for.

But the ASA announced yesterday that Google had agreed to provide "vital seed capital" to help launch a digital advertising regulation initiative. However, the agreement is pretty short term, and a more long term arrangement needs to be sorted out. Nevertheless, it has been hailed as a landmark deal in the self-regulation of online advertisng. 

The ASA's Winston Fletcher told reporters: "This stands to be an incredibly important development in effective self regulation by the advertising industry. It promises to strengthen significantly the reach and work of the ASA, which will be good for our industry and vital for consumers. The active role that Google has played has been essential".