We always thought the video resolution in this Skype TV ad was a bit too impressive. Now the UK’s Advertising Standards Authority has banned the commercial for misleading viewers…
The ad showed a showed a proud father holding his baby up to his webcam for watching grandparents to see — but five viewers complained that the footage exaggerated the clearness of the sound and picture, which can vary wildly depending on broadband speeds (judge for yourself by watching the hi-def YouTube spot).
In its defence, Skype told the ASA that for technical reasons the ad wasn’t actually shot using Skype at all — the slight flickering and blurring was added in post-production. But the company argued that the footage was equivalent to the best sound and picture quality achievable at home and that users with the right connection wouldn’t be disappointed.
The ASA cleared Skype for not using its own technology to film the ad, but it concluded: “We considered that viewers would infer that the sound and picture quality depicted in the ad was typical of the performance that all users could achieve… the ad could mislead and should therefore have included qualifying text to make clear that performance depended upon the speed and quality of a users broadband connection.”
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