Ad watchdogs fight the corner for self-regulation: the ASA faces a number of challenges as it enters its 41st year. (Live Issue/ASA).(Advertising Standards Authority)

As a statement of the blindingly obvious, it's hard to beat the communique affirming a commitment to self-regulation that's expected to climax this week's summit meeting of ad industry watchdogs.

Anything less than wholehearted rededication to adland's system of policing itself would seem like turkeys voting for Christmas.

Yet there are sound reasons why the two-day powwow at a Teddington conference centre is being regarded as more than just an excuse for celebrating the Advertising Standards Authority's 40th birthday.

For senior executives of the ASA, the rule-making Committee of Advertising Practice and the Advertising Standards Board of Finance, which bankrolls both bodies, the anniversary is seen as an appropriate time to take stock. How effective is self-regulation? How well equipped is it to deal with the challenges of a media landscape which bears little resemblance to the one into which the ASA was born?

"Other countries look to the UK system as the best in the world but we can't be smug and complacent," the chairman of Asbof, Winston Fletcher, declares. "The system won't stay in good health unless we exercise it."

Moreover, the spectre of statutory control lurks constantly in the background. The Labour government has been generally supportive of the status quo but its backing has never been a given. …