Mumbai: Advertisers now have a clear set of guidelines on which they can base their influencer driven ads/commercials. Industry watchdog - the Advertising Standards Council of India (Asci)  -  unveiled the final guidelines for influencer advertising on digital media today. The ombudsman had initially released some draft guidelines  in February and sought feedback from all stakeholders – advertisers, agencies, influencers and consumers. Asci then incorporated the responses before drawing up the final framework.    To ensure a collaborative process and expert inputs, ASCI tied up with Big Bang Social, a leading marketplace for social storytelling, to get India’s leading digital influencers’ views on board.

The new rules will become applicable to commercial messages or advertisements published on or after 14 June 2021. The guidelines clearly lay out the definitions for the terms influencer, virtual influencer, material connection and digital media. Asci has introduced  Asci.social platform- a digital platform that will house information about the rules applicable to the  community of influencers, marketers, agencies and consumers. Additionally, all promotional content in which they feature will have to mandatory  be labelled as such by the influencers. Asci has roped in Reech, a French technology provider to monitor potential violations of the guidelines.

GUIDELINES:

Disclosure: All advertisements published by social media influencers or their representatives, on such influencers’ accounts must carry a disclosure label that clearly identifies it as an advertisement.

Criteria for disclosure :

a. Disclosure is required if there is any material connection between the advertiser and the influencer.

b. Material connection isn’t limited to monetary compensation. And includes anything of value given to mention or talk about the Advertiser’s product or service, like free or discounted products or service or other perks

c. a disclosure is needed even if they weren’t specifically asked to talk about that product or service.

d. Disclosures are required even if the evaluations are unbiased or fully originated by Influencer, so long as there is a material connection between Advertiser and Influencer.

e. If there is no material connection and the influencer is telling people about a product or service they bought and happen to like, that is not considered to be an advertisement and no disclosure is required on such posts.

· Disclosure must be upfront and prominent so that it is not missed by an average consumer

· Any one or more disclosure labels can be used: advertisement, ad, sponsored, collaboration, partnership, employee, free gift

· If the advertisement is only a picture or video post without accompanying text (such as Instagram stories or Snapchat), the disclosure label needs to be superimposed over the picture/video

I. For videos that last 15 seconds or less, the disclosure label must stay for a minimum of 3 seconds.

II. For videos which are 2 minutes or longer, the disclosure label must stay for the entire duration of the section in which the promoted brand is mentioned.

· In live streams, the disclosure label should be announced at the beginning and the end of the broadcast.

· In the case of audio media, the disclosure must be clearly announced at the beginning and at the end of the audio, and before and after every break that is taken in between.

· The disclosure should be in English OR in the language as the advertisement itself in a way that is easy for an average consumer to understand.

Responsibility of disclosure of material connection and also of the content of advertisement is upon the advertiser for whose product or service the advertisement is, and also upon the Influencer.