Advertising Standards Bureau - Review of Operations 2013 | Page 23

Achievements in 2013
Our strategic plan

Our key result areas

The Board of Directors of the
Advertising Standards Bureau, along
with the CEO, govern the strategic
direction of the Bureau. Through its
strategic, financial and operational
dealings, the Board aims to position
the ASB as the foremost complaints
resolution body for advertising in
Australia.

Financial

Our strategic plan covers four key
result areas.

The ASB is financially viable and sustainable
A core role for the Advertising Standards
Bureau is to promote the benefits of Australia’s
advertising self-regulation system to advertisers
and encourage participation in the levy system.
Levy is collected by media buyers and remitted
directly to the administering body the Australian
Advertising Standards Council (AASC). The
AASC in turn provides funding to cover the
operations of the ASB.
During the first half of 2013, a significant
amount of work was directed into reviewing
and assessing the levy collection and remittance
framework to address gaps in the system. This
work culminated in the ASB Board of Directors
identifying strategies to address gaps and also in
a confirmation that the current levy system with
collection by media buying companies remains the
most suitable model for the levy.
During the second half of 2013, following
the review of the levy collection model, the
ASB revisited the question of the levy rate.
A consultation process with all key industry
stakeholders regarding an increase in the rate of
the self-regulation levy resulted in key industry
stakeholders endorsing a levy increase and
agreeing to support the process of notification
and implementation of the increase. As part
of its reasoning for an increase of the levy rate,
ASB highlighted that the levy rate had remained
unchanged since 1997 despite a significant
increase in the number of codes, complaints, cases
and media touch points between 1997 and 2013.

Review of Operations 2013

The self-regulation levy will increase to 0.05%
($500 per $1m of media buying) from 1 April
2014. The implementation of the levy increase will
be a major part of ASB’s work for the first quarter
of 2014 as will targeting large advertisers who do
not contribute.
The ASB continued to administer the complaint
adjudication functions on behalf of the Federal
Chamber of Automotive Industries (FCAI) and
Australian Food and Grocery Council (AFGC
- for the Responsible Children’s Marketing
Initiative and Quick Service Restaurant
Initiative). ASB receives a fee for the provision of
these services.
Following on from the work undertaken in late
2012 the ASB continued its Activity Based
Costing exercise for a further period in early 2013.
The data was collated and analysed by ASB’s
contract accountants (BDO). As a result, ASB
can more accurately identify costs involved in
undertaking the complaint adjudication service
in respect of the Codes and Initiatives under
its administration. The data was instrumental
in ASB negotiating a more realistic fee for
administration of the RCMI and QSRI by the
AFGC and similarly for ASB’s assistance with
administration of the ABAC system.

Revenues are in line with media expenditure
The financial administration and control of
the Advertising Standards Bureau is overseen
by an independent internationally recognised
accounting firm (BDO) with accounts audited
by an independent national audit firm (Grant
Thornton). The audit report for the financial year
2012-13 co