In this, the education sector remains the single largest violative sector, followed by health care and personal care
The Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI) on Tuesday said it has set up a digital tracking system and is using Artificial Intelligence-based system to monitor advertisements for misleading content in a digital-first world.
ASCI while releasing its Annual Complaints Report for FY 2021-22 said, it has received 7,631 complaints and processed 5,532 advertisements across mediums including print, digital, and television.
In this, the education sector remains the single largest violative sector, followed by health care and personal care.
Moreover, in FY22, 48 per cent of the objectionable ads were put on digital media, followed by print with 47 per cent and 3 per cent on TV and the rest 2 per cent on others.
Now ”digital ecosystem takes centre stage – whether it is influencers who contributed to nearly 29 per cent of all complaints taken up by ASCI”, the report said, adding FY22 also witnessed ”emergence of categories like crypto and gaming in the top five violative categories.”
Ads are increasingly being served and consumed on personal screens, making it difficult for regulators to truly understand the scale and impact, ASCI said, adding that ”the volume of advertising creative units has exploded, and it is estimated that an average person is exposed to 6,000-10,000 ads per day.”
”There is a lot of action around digital. We are using our AI-based monitoring systems. It has been a very digital focus year for us,” said ASCI CEO & Secretary General Manisha Kapoor while addressing a virtual media round table.
The regulator has a tie up with a French company. ASCI had started with them as influencer work and has now extended it to look at brand platforms etc.
”That uses certain algorithms and spotlight ads which could be misleading and violate ASCI Code. We have a team, which finally decides which ads are violative and be taken out,” she said, adding, ”We also work closely with TAM ( Media Research) and they have some feeds.” ASCI would continue to invest in AI and other technologies to scan the ads, Kapoor said.
In digital space, 43 per cent of the objectionable ads were on Instagram, 28 per cent on Youtube, 18 per cent on the website, 6 per cent on Twitter and the rest 3 per cent on Facebook.
”Digital media came into sharp focus,” said ASCI adding it has made ”significant investments in digital monitoring — be it the 3,000 websites we monitored, or the AI-enabled identification of disguised ads we undertook”.
2021-22, marks a new era of digital-focused guidelines, monitoring and compliance, even as it keeps an eye on TV and print, said ASCI.
”With a sharp focus on the digital domain, ASCI saw an overall compliance rate of 94 per cent,” it said.
Commenting on the annual report, ASCI Chairman Subhash Kamath said in 2021-22 the ad regulator followed through its promise of increasingly monitoring the digital media given the way it has been dominating the advertising landscape.
”We invested heavily in technology and that has worked quite well. We also upgraded our complaints system which has made it very easy for consumers to register their complaints and for advertisers to respond to it.
”Going ahead, we will continue to be at the forefront in understanding how best to regulate and monitor the digital frontier, even as we keep streamlining our processes to become more responsive, and more proactive, he said.
In FY22, around 75 per cent of complaints were taken suo-motto by the regulator and 21 per cent from the consumer, while the rest were intra-industry complaints and from the government.
”In 2021-22, ASCI processed a whopping 62 per cent more ads compared to the previous year, and 25 per cent more complaints,” it added.
Out of the 5,532 complaints processed, ”94 per cent of ads needed changes”.
Overall, the education sector led with the tag of the most complained category with 33 per cent followed by healthcare with 16 per cent.
Moreover, the report also noted a 41 per cent rise in complaints of misleading claims in advertisements featuring celebrities as compared to the previous year.
”Complaints regarding misleading claims in ads featuring celebrities saw a 41 per cent increase out of which a staggering 92 per cent were found to be violating ASCI’s guidelines,” it said.