Lines like “from £199 a month”, “0% finance available” and “buy now, pay next year” are some of the most persuasive you can put in an advert, which is exactly why they come with more rules than almost anything else you might say.
If you sell cars, kitchens, windows, sofas or anything else that people tend to pay for over time, this is worth understanding before your advert is written, because it affects how the whole thing is put together, from the wording of the offer to the number of seconds left over for everything else.
Why finance is treated differently
Offering credit is regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority, and its rules apply to advertising as well as to the paperwork. On top of that, the advert still has to meet the normal broadcast rules that Clearcast checks. So a finance offer has two sets of requirements to satisfy, and the two are joined together, because the part of the broadcast code that covers financial products says an advert for credit is only acceptable on television if it complies with the FCA’s rules.
The FCA doesn’t look at adverts before they go out, which surprises a lot of people. The responsibility lies with a firm it has authorised, which either puts the advert out in its own name or approves it, so you can expect to be asked which authorised firm is standing behind yours. A retailer or dealer who introduces customers to a finance company is normally acting as a credit broker and not as the lender, and the FCA’s guide for credit brokers says the advertising should make that clear, which is why so many adverts say so in the small print.
The representative example
The rule that does most to shape an advert is the one about the representative example. If your advert shows an interest rate, or any figure that relates to the cost of borrowing, such as a monthly payment that includes interest, it has to include one.
That’s a set of figures showing what a typical deal looks like, including the rate of interest, the amount of credit, the representative APR, the length of the agreement, the total amount payable and the amount of each payment. Where it applies, the cash price and the deposit are included too. The FCA’s rules say it has to be clear, concise and prominent, and that it mustn’t be given any less prominence than the figure that prompted it. So the more boldly a monthly payment is presented, the more weight the example has to carry beside it, which is a judgement the finance company will want a say in.
The word “representative” matters as well, because the APR has to be one that most of the customers who take up the offer can expect to get. An advert can’t be built around your very best rate if only a few people will qualify for it.
In some cases the representative APR has to be shown even when you haven’t quoted a price, for example if the advert includes an incentive to apply or suggests that credit is available to people who might expect to be turned down. An incentive can be less obvious than it sounds, and the FCA’s guide gives the promise of an instant decision as an example. It works the other way round too, because an advert that says only that finance is available, with no rate, no payment and no incentive, doesn’t generally bring any of these requirements with it, and that gives you a real choice about how much of the offer to put on screen.
Where the small print comes in
On television, all of that usually appears as text at the bottom of the screen. We’ve written about how that text works in what are supers?, and finance is where it matters most, because there’s a lot to fit in.
There are published guidelines on how big the text has to be and how long it has to stay up. The guidance asks for a minimum height, measured in lines of the television picture, so that it can be read on an ordinary set from the sofa.
How long it stays on screen is worked out from the number of words. The text is allowed a fifth of a second for each word, plus a few seconds on top for the viewer to notice it’s there. Figures count as the words you’d say out loud, so “£1,255” counts as more than one word, and a representative example is made up mostly of figures.
What that does to a 30-second advert
A representative example can easily run to thirty words or more. At a fifth of a second a word that’s six seconds, and the extra time takes it to around nine. So the small print alone can need to be on screen for close to a third of a 30-second advert, and longer if it runs to more than a couple of lines.
That has a real effect on the design. The pictures behind the text need to be calm enough for it to be read, the offer needs to appear early enough for the text to run its full time, and there has to be room left for your name and what you’d like viewers to do next. When the finance offer is added at the last minute, this is where it goes wrong, because the advert has already been planned shot by shot, and suddenly a block of text has to sit over it for nine seconds.
Deciding how much of the offer to show
Since all of this follows from what the advert says, the first decision is about the idea, and it’s best made before anybody writes a script. A monthly figure is a strong reason for somebody to get in touch, and if it’s the point of the campaign, it earns its nine seconds. The advert is then built around the offer from the first frame, with the payment arriving early and the closing shots kept simple enough for the text to be read.
The alternative is to give the advert a different job, which is to make people know and like your name, and to leave the figures for the showroom and the website, where there’s room to explain them properly. Motor Depot, a car dealer whose adverts we’ve worked on with the agency PAB Studios, have always been clear that they don’t want adverts that focus only on prices and sales messages, and would sooner blend what they sell with a funny situation, such as a teacher and her class of twenty children. An advert like that can still mention that finance is available, without giving up a third of its running time to the figures.
The version that tends to struggle is the halfway one, where an advert made to build your name has a finance offer squeezed into its last few seconds. We’ve written separately about the difference between building your name and getting a response.
What it means for the schedule
Finance adds to the timetable in two ways. The first is sign-off, because the finance company’s compliance team will need to agree the wording, ideally before the script goes to Clearcast, and that’s an extra round of approval which runs to somebody else’s diary.
The second is that finance offers have a shelf life. Rates change and end dates pass, and an advert is cleared as one exact version, so each change means a new version that has to be cleared again. If you know the offer will be different next quarter, say so at the start, so that the advert can be made with the offer in a section of its own that can be replaced without remaking the rest. The rules are under review too, because the FCA consulted in 2026 on simplifying its advertising rules for credit, which makes the lender’s compliance team the best guide to what applies on the day your advert goes out.
How we handle it
If finance is part of your offer, we plan for it from the first draft of the script. That means deciding how the offer will be worded, working out how much text it’s going to need and how long it has to be held, and designing the advert so that it all sits comfortably. We’ll prepare the wording for the finance company’s compliance team to look at, check the size and timing of the text, and deal with Clearcast on your behalf.
We’ve made adverts for car dealerships and home improvement companies, so if it’s part of your plans, tell us about the offer and we’ll talk you through what it involves.