NEW DELHI: The Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI) is setting up a task force to monitor and regulate advertising on OTT platforms, an Economic Times report stated.
“Advertising on OTT was not part of ASCI guidelines earlier; we are now working with the ministry of information and broadcasting to form guidelines and processes, which will monitor advertising on these platforms,” ASCI chairman Subhash Kamath reportedly said.
He added that the council is working in close collaboration with the government to fine-tune existing guidelines and create new ones.
ASCI is also expected to set up a taskforce to scrutinise brand promotions weaved in content programming.
In related news, the council recently launched the #ChupNaBaitho campaign to raise consumer awareness about objectionable advertisements. It is one of several initiatives planned by ASCI to create awareness about misleading ads and encourage consumers to report such advertisements. In the three-month pilot, ASCI will focus on Mumbai and New Delhi.
The initiative would have social media posts about relevant topics and a call to action, which would tell consumers when and how to report advertisements that are offensive, misleading, make fake promises, push harmful products, etc. The campaign went live on Instagram and Facebook along with other platforms on Friday.
“If it works well, we’ll look at extending it to other cities and maybe even mainline media in future,” added Kamath.
Advertising mein jhoot ke bolbaale ko bolo bye-bye. Jhoote ads dekh, ASCI ko whatsapp karo - +91 77100 12345. Aage hum dekh lenge. #ChupNaBaitho pic.twitter.com/X4cv1GEk3V
— ASCI (@ascionline) January 29, 2021
ASCI secretary-general Manisha Kapoor said the consumers should be more aware of their rights and what constitutes objectionable advertising.
“We want them to report such claims to us and we promise to act quickly and decisively on such complaints. The overall goal is to drastically reduce the number of misleading and objectionable advertisements. Over the last few months, we have introduced several guidelines, reports and advisories like the ones on Covid2019 advertising and online gaming for real money winnings. The Trust in Advertising report that studied how much faith consumers have in advertising is another example of how focused we are towards protecting consumers. #ChupNaBaitho is another step towards this goal. We want to encourage consumers, especially the youth, to report advertisements that they find objectionable. This campaign is just the start and will be followed by other such initiatives in the year,” she detailed.
