The body that co-ordinates advertising for the British government has ordered its internet campaigns to be kept off user-generated pages on social networking websites to avoid marketing next to contentious or offensive content.

The policy by the Central Office of Information (COI) is designed to spare the British government the fate suffered by several large companies who pulled advertising from Facebook, the popular networking site, after their corporate campaigns were discovered running next to a page with details for the far-right British National party.