The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has upheld two issues against BioID Health and one against Numan over Facebook ads relating to testosterone services.
It said that the rulings form part of a “wider piece of work on ads relating to low testosterone, identified for investigation following complaints and intelligence gathered by our Active Ad Monitoring system”.
The regulator investigated two paid-for Facebook ads for BioID Health, hormone therapy that were seen in January 2026.
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The first ad contained a caption stating, “Your GP said your testosterone is ‘fine’. But you still feel exhausted, foggy, and flat. We test deeper than your doctor did”.
It also featured a video with a man saying “Here’s the problem with going to your normal doctor [...]. They ask basic questions, run some standard blood work and they might miss something and tell you you’re at normal levels when actually you’re not [...].
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“We ask a different set of questions. We run different tests. And we look for different markers, and it produces completely different results. […] Now that is the difference a specialist consultation can make. […] Of course, low testosterone might not be the problem but that’s what the consultation is for […]. Get the proper assessment you need […]”.
The second ad featured an image an image of a man in a white medical coat with a stethoscope around his neck.
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The ad stated text such as “Still exhausted after 8 hours sleep? Your GP says you’re normal – we say you deserve better”. It also included the headings “The symptoms they (GPs) dismiss”.
The ASA challenged whether “the claims in the ads to provide more effective tests and services than GPs were misleading and could be substantiated” and whether the ads were “irresponsible because they implied that GPs were insufficiently thorough”.
Response
BioID Health said its intention with the ads was to show that “their service specialised in hormone health with clinical assessment that combined symptom evaluation and biochemical testing not only of testosterone levels but also other parameters”.
It said that “it was not their intention to suggest that GPs provided inadequate care”, or “that their own approach was superior”, but accepted that the wording could be interpreted as such.
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It said it “did not hold comparative clinical evidence to substantiate a claim to be more objectively more effective than GP-led care”.
BioID Health has withdrawn the ads and are “in the process” of amending other ads containing comparative claims about GPs.
The ASA upheld both the investigated challenges and said the ads “must not appear again in the form investigated”.
Numan case
The ASA also upheld a complaint made against two paid-for Facebook ads for Numan digital healthcare, seen in January 2026.
The first ad contained text stating “40% of men with obesity have low testosterone. You’re not broken. You’ve just been running on empty, and no one’s checked the tank”. It also featured a clickable button labelled “Blood tests from £74.50”.
The second ad stated that “95% of men with low testosterone are undiagnosed”. The ASA challenged “whether the claims in the ads about low testosterone could be substantiated”.
Response
Numan said that the first ad ran from December 17 2025 to January 7 2026 and the second ran from December 17 2025 to April 21 2026 and that “neither had been in use since”.
It said the “40% of men with obesity have low testosterone claim”, though based on a study of a US cohort, was valid for a UK audience as “both the US and UK classify obesity as a BMI greater than or equal to 30”.
Numan described “the prevalence finding as consistent with, and conservative compared to, wider, peer-reviewed evidence, as set out in a systematic review and meta-analysis they provided, which included a section on male hypogonadism that reviewed 18 studies and covered a total of 4,546 men with obesity”.
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This reported “a prevalence of biochemical hypogonadism of 42.8% when measured by total testosterone.”
Numan said that the claim that “95% of men with low testosterone are undiagnosed” was drawn from a survey of 974 UK men. “The report stated that 49% of respondents had symptom profiles suggestive of testosterone deficiency and that 5% reported a formal medical diagnosis.”
Numan accepted that this claim was not substantiated because the cohort surveyed were men with symptoms of low testosterone, rather than clinically confirmed and accepted that there had been “an inadvertent and genuine error in the interpretation of the studies”.
Upheld
The ASA noted that for the “40% of men with obesity have low testosterone” claim, the findings of the study Numan cited were published in 2016 and the analysis in 2010.
It found that 313 of the 2,162 participants were excluded from analysis and so the statistic Numan presented “inaccurately represented the findings of the analysis”.
The ASA also said that “while the analysis did state that 40% of obese men aged 45 or over had high subnormal free testosterone concentrations, that 40% figure was based on only 489 participants: obese men who were non-diabetic.”
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The body also said that Numan “did not make clear that the finding did not apply to men between the ages of 18 and 44”.
The ASA also took issue with the systematic review and meta-analysis of other peer-reviewed evidence that Numan provided to support the 40% claim.
The body said all but one of these studies were at “higher risk of bias” because they had performed only a single measurement of testosterone. It said this “further called into question the validity of the 42.8% figure as a means of judging the 40% claim”.
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The ASA welcomed Numan’s assurance that they had withdrawn the ad claiming that “95% of men with low testosterone are undiagnosed” on the basis that that it was the result of an unintended misinterpretation of the data.
The body found that both ads breached the code because it had not seen “adequate substantiation for the health-related claims made”.
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It comes after the regulator ruled against Bolt Pharmacy last month over ads posted to a Facebook page called “UK Weight Loss Reviews”.
And it follows the ASA upholding complaints made against Phlo for weight-loss ads on the same social media platform.
