False advertising

Misleading advertising is advertising that, in any form (including its presentation), can mislead its recipients or affect their economic behavior. For the authors O'Guinn, Allen and Semenik, misleading advertising is one whose characteristics of an advertisement are different from the claims of the brand's performance.

Deceptive advertising is also understood to be advertising that silences fundamental data about goods, activities, or other services, provided that said omission misleads recipients.

Forms of misleading advertising

Some forms of misleading advertising:

1. Messages containing ambiguous, unknown expressions or a variety of meanings that give rise to the risk that the recipient interprets the message in a wrong sense, different from reality.
2. Use of messages that encourage the buyer to make a quick decision but that have not been done for a while.
3. Hiding of important information such as the presence of additional overcosts or clauses through techniques such as the use of small or unintelligible letters, which is quickly moved by the television screen or the direct omission of this information.
4. No effective availability of the alternatives they publish when hiring a service, such as a decoder for one satellite or another in the case of paid channels.
5. Cost a product in an advertising campaign. In some countries it is very common to do this when it comes to cigarettes and/or alcoholic beverages, as they have laws that expressly proscribe their dissemination by means such as radio and/or television.
6. Launch "imitation" products to the market (marks of unconventional names using designs very similar to the original product), which are usually of lower quality.

Illegal advertising

Misleading advertising can be defined and punished by laws, especially consumer protection regulations. Even so, misleading advertising is different from the concept of illegal advertising, since the latter must be understood more broadly. Illegal advertising is both misleading advertising and unfair, subliminal or any other advertising that violates the provisions of the regulations that regulate the advertising of certain products, goods, activities or services.

Misleading green advertising

The added value of organic has led to an increase in the use of misleading green advertising or greenwashing, reaching an incidence of more than 90% in products with ecological claims.