Adverts featuring twerking businessmen in high heels and shorts and blind footballers kicking cats were among the most complained-about commercials of 2016.
MoneySuperMarket dominated the top 10 - none of which were banned - with its three ads featuring Gary the dancing bodyguard and the twerking businessman Dave and his builder rival Colin.
The three ads received a combined 2,491 complaints - from offended viewers who found Gary’s dance moves “distasteful” and argued that the ads featuring Dave and Colin could be seen to be homophobic and could encourage hate crimes.
The top ten adverts received a total of 4,872 complaints.
Match.com’s ad showing a woman removing her female partner’s top and passionately kissing her received 896 complaints from viewers who believed it was sexually explicit and inappropriately scheduled.
Paddy Power’s ad featuring blindfolded men playing football was first shown in 2010, when it generated more than 1,000 complaints, and its re-run last year drew another 450 submissions to the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA).
The ASA originally ruled that the ad had not broken the rules and the majority of viewers would see it as humorous and not humiliating or undermining to blind people, and so did not reinvestigate it last year.
Completing the list was Smart Energy’s ad featuring cartoon characters Gaz and Leccy, the Home Office’s ‘Disrespect Nobody’ ad about domestic violence, an ad for Maltesers featuring a woman in a wheelchair and a series of ads for Gourmet Burger Kitchen, which made references to giving up vegetarianism.
The ASA found that none of the 10 ads “crossed the line” between bad taste and offence.
ASA chief executive Guy Parker said: “The ads that attract the highest number of complaints are often not the ones that need banning. Our action leads to thousands of ads being amended or withdrawn each year, mostly for being misleading, but there wasn’t one misleading ad in the top 10.
“In the list there are a number of ads, which while advertising their product or service, have also sought to present a positive statement about diversity but were in fact seen by some as doing the opposite.
“In all those cases, we thought people generally would see the ads in a positive light and that the boundary between bad taste and serious or widespread offence had been navigated well enough, often through using sensible scheduling restrictions.”
The top 10 most complained about adverts
1 MoneySuperMarket.com (dancing bodyguard) 1,063
2 MoneySuperMarket.com (gang dance-off) 898
3. Match.com (kissing women) 896
4. MoneySuperMarket.com (solo dance-off) 530
5. Paddy Power (blind football) 450
6. Smart Energy GB (Gaz and Leccy) 253
7. Paddy Power (Scotland fans) 220
8. Home Office (domestic violence) 216
9. Gourmet Burger Kitchen (vegetarianism) 195
10. Mars/Maltesers (disability) 151