NAD Warns Advertiser Over Exaggerating Advantages

Last week, NAD announced a decision involving a series of AT&T Fiber ads that holds important lessons for companies that make comparative performance claims.

Each of the ads depicts a funny scene in which a cable user is unable to perform a basic task. For example, in one ad, a mother sits in front of her laptop with a birthday cake, waiting for her son to join a video conference. When the son can't connect, the mother blows out the candle, and leaves disappointed. In another ad, an executive impatiently awaits a file for a presentation, while the person sending it panics as the file won't upload. The ads state that if you can't perform the tasks depicted because you have cable, "you need better internet," and that AT&T offers "20x faster upload speeds than cable."