Mars paid Price (also known as Jordan) and Ferdinand to promote Snickers on Twitter as part of its "You're not you when you're hungry" campaign.
The two celebs each made four ‘out of character’ tweets followed by a final tweet that included a picture of them holding a Snickers bar.
Ferdinand’s first four tweets spoke about the joys of knitting, while Price tweeted about the global economy and large scale quantitative easing.
The final tweets included the hash tag #spon, short for sponsored, which indicated the tweets were a marketing communication.
The first four tweets included no #spon tag and the ASA was called to assess whether the entire package was in breach of the CAP Code on advertising practices.
The ASA ruled that each tweet in the series formed part of an orchestrated marketing campaign.
“We noted the first four tweets in each series served as ‘teasers’, which, due to their nature, were likely to generate additional interest in the celebrities’ postings, ”it said in its decision.
“We considered it was acceptable that the first four tweets were not individually labelled as being part of the overall marketing communications. We therefore concluded that the ads did not breach the Code,” it concluded.
Similar tweets appeared on the social media platform from boxer Amir Khan, ex-cricketer Ian Botham and X-factor contestant Cher Lloyd.
