Rio Ferdinand rapped by advertising watchdog over Qatar World Cup post

Rio Ferdinand has been rapped by the advertising watchdog over a football World Cup social media post promoting a Qatar tourism website, it was revealed today.

An Instagram post by the former Manchester United and England defender seen before Christmas last year featured a video which promoted the Visit Qatar site.

A caption alongside the video stated: "Time spent eating my bodyweight in the kitchen! That's a wrap for Qatar, been great filming behind the scenes and meeting so many locals!" Text underneath that stated '#VisitQatar' and below that '#ad'.

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But the Advertising Standards Authority, the UK's regulator of advertising, said in a written judgement today that when viewing the post on a mobile device the hashtags were not visible, and a user would have had to click on a 'more' button to view them.

The ASA said a viewer challenged whether the post was obviously identifiable as a marketing communication. The watchdog said Qatar Tourism, trading as Visit Qatar, acknowledged that the presentation of the label was not prominent enough.

"They informed us that they had liaised with Rio Ferdinand's representatives and that the post had been amended to make the label clearer. They also informed us that they would ensure that all future marketing communication posts would be more prominently labelled," said the ASA ruling.

The watchdog added TV pundit Ferdinand's representative said they 'believed that all guidelines had been followed as the post included a #ad label'. "They said they used the #ad label because Instagram had previously advised them to do so," said the ASA.

Advertising codes state marketing communications must be obviously