Shell Energy UK ASA ruling: LinkedIn ad

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) gave a ruling on Shell Energy UK for a paid for LinkedIn ad, dated 1 October 2025.

This provides a useful insight into how to get green claims right and the ASA's view on LinkedIn content.

The ASA made it clear that they consider LinkedIn to have a mixed business and consumer audience, that said an ad may still be considered as a ‘business to business’ (B2B) communication rather than consumer-facing. Namely, if it very clearly concerns only business accessible services and information. Therefore, the focus of the ad was considered primarily important over and above the actual audience for deciding its’ target.  

Also, the ASA clearly found that the use of a very specific example of a green initiative to be more acceptable way for a business like Shell to talk about green claims and helps to ensure the claim it would be unlikely to be extrapolated to the business as a whole. Which avoided the possibility of green washing.

Advert

A paid-for LinkedIn ad for Shell Energy, seen on 22 April 2025, featured a video containing imagery of the sun and solar energy. On-screen text stated, “What connects the Italian sun with bright engineering ideas? Our work with Baker Hughes to help meet their energy needs and decarbonise operations. Discover more at shell.com/progress together. Progress together”. 

A caption stated, “Discover the progress we’re making together with Baker Hughes to help reduce their emissions and decarbonise their operations in Italy. Progress happens together".

Issue

The complainant (x1 complainant) challenged whether the ad gave a misleading impression of the overall environmental impact of Shell’s business activities.

The CAP Code stated that marketing communications must not materially mislead and that the basis of environmental claims must be clear. 
 
LinkedIn: LinkedIn was found by the ASA to be both consumer-facing and B2B. This was despite Shell using a number of interest-based tags and targeting tools to direct the ad to a specific business audience and asserting LinkedIn, as a platform for businesses, should be considered B2B.  
 
The ASA however continued, despite the ad most likely being seen by a mixed audience, they found it prominently featured the Shell Energy name and logo and its content was focused on business solutions provided by Shell Energy, which were not available to general consumers. The ASA then found this positioned the ad in a business context and the ASA considered the ad was a business-to-business marketing communication and was likely to be understood as such by its audience. 
 
Specific example: The content of the ad continued to target Shell Energy’s work with a specific client, as a case study in how Shell Energy was helping business clients decarbonise their operations and the progress they were making together in that regard. The ASA held that due to this specific focus it was unlikely the ad would be interpreted to be representative of Shell’s wider consumer-facing brand activity or as a comment on its own carbon transition plans.

Key takeaways for Food and agribusiness

• Like energy companies, Food and agri does have a significant environmental impact. This ruling illustrates how content that is clearly about specific initiatives is more likely to avoid enforcement for green washing - particularly when the advertiser is associated with heavy environmental impact.
• LinkedIn content should be looked at through the eyes of both consumers and businesses. It cannot be treated as purely trade advertising. While the ASA did not say that targeting on LinkedIn would never work clearly it did not work on this occasion. This would have implications for any businesses seeking to use the so-called trade exemption to the incoming restrictions on paid for online ads in relation to less healthy nature of a product's. For more about what this ruling means for advertising generally please see ASA ruling on Shell Energy UK.