NOW TV has been told it must make clear when its entertainment packages include content interrupted by commercials.
It follows a single complaint to the Advertising Standards Authority over its Entertainment 6 Month Saver offer. The price of the package was displayed as £6.99, reduced from £9.99 per month, followed by details about the plan including the minimum subscription term, the inclusion of free trials for Cinema and Boost and the plans’ cancellation policy.
Further “Terms & Conditions” were listed below in a drop-down section, in small text, stating “… Cinema and Boost members only. After your 7-day free trial […] Boost auto-renews at £6 a month, unless cancelled. You can cancel anytime. Ad-free excludes live channels and trailers promoting NOW content. Boost features available on selected content and devices only. See here for more details”.
The complainant argued that the ad was misleading as it didn’t make clear that without the ‘Boost’ upgrade, all NOW TV membership plans included ads.
Sky UK Ltd, which operates the NOW TV platform, acknowledged to the ASA that the ad did not state that the on-demand content available as part of its subscription packages would feature advertising. However, they considered that the presence of ads was not a main characteristic of the service and therefore that it was not material information.
NOW TV had shown ads for its own content since around 2015, including content requiring consumers to upgrade, and had introduced a basic membership plan that featured advertising before and during streams of individual shows or movies in July 2021.
It’s a familiar offer by streaming services and NOW added that it would expected customers wanting further information to check the website to learn whether or not the service contained ads.
The average consumer visiting the NOW website would reasonably expect basic membership plans to include ads.
Sky considered that the assertion that the absence of an explicit warning about ads in NOW’s basic membership plans constituted a misleading omission was unreasonable and failed to reflect what was happening in UK streaming services.
They added that the information about the NOW Boost upgrade which was accessible via the “How NOW works” link at the top of the nowtv.com landing page made it clear that without upgrading to NOW Boost, a basic membership plan would include ads in on-demand content.
