As the most visible element of the marketing communications mix, advertising has had its critics and, given the choice, developed countries usually select a self-regulatory approach to deal with unacceptable or irresponsible advertising. This article reviews the literature in this area and incorporates thoughtful contributions from research conducted with New Zealand's Advertising Standards Authority. This approach helps bridge the gap between theory and practice and assists advertising practitioners and regulators concerned with advertising control to eliminate undesirable features of such systems in the future. Findings indicate that practice differs from theory in the areas of complaint acceptance procedures and code enforcement. A challenge for future research lies in addressing these two key components of the model in more detail and less breadth.