MSE News: Martin Lewis issues warning over financial regulator’s PPI adverts

The problem is that the message needs to be imparted within a few seconds of airtime. A full quote of the FCA website address would be confusing to many of the people the advert is trying to reach.

Regardless, it should be a simple matter to differentiate between an official FCA site and a Claims Company and if people sign contracts which stipulate a third of any redress will be lost they have to take responsibility for this themselves.

Why doesn't the FCA have a gov.uk address? The F(inancial)SA did, as does the F(ood)SA.

Looking at the rules for registering a gov.uk sub-domain, it is open for Non-Departmental Public Bodies (NDPBs), and I'm pretty sure the FCA is an NDPB even if https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/financial-conduct-authority doesn't want to say it is.

"Visit FCA dot org dot uk slash PPI" for the audio/audio-visual ads, and the full URL plus a QR code for the posters.

Or if they only care about getting the information out, a succinct "Google PPI" would do - after the ads is a featured snippet for the MSE page on PPI. A "Google PPI and ignore the ads" would have the MSE page at #1, the FCA at #2, and Which at #3.

Actually, my SEO "what search terms are already optimised" Googling suggests the best search term for audio/audio-visual advertisements targeted at Google users is "PPI deadline", because on Google that gives (after the ads*) a featured snippet of the MSE page with the actual deadline stated by Google as a fact with MSE as the source, and the first link after that being the FCA page.

Searching Twitter for "PPI deadline" also brings up the FCA's PPI verified Twitter account at the top of the search results.

* At page load, ad #1 was an FCA ad that includes the deadline date, ads #2 & #3 don't mention a deadline, and ad #4 doesn't say what the deadline is. If the FCA changes the (non-Google) ads, there'll probably be a bidding war and a better optimisation of the other ads for this search term.

It is a bl**dy awful advert.

I don't think Martin needs to worry too much.

The only thing this advert impresses on me is that it adds to the canon that makes me wonder how many people in the advertising industry are using hallucinatory drugs, or that they think brand recognition is everything, even if it desperately relies only on making the advert memorable by being annoying as possible.