Draft guidelines for influencer advertising on digital platform by Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI)

Draft guidelines for influencer advertising on digital platform by Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI)

Subject: Polity

Context: ASCI have come out with the draft guidelines for influencer advertising on digital platform to ensure transparency regarding their paid partnerships with brands.

Concept:

The guidelines are important to regulate advertising on digital platforms by influencers for influencers market is estimated to be $75-$150 million a year.

Features of the draft guidelines:

• Ensure “disclosure labels to highlight advertising content” and these should be upfront, prominent and clearly visible on all devices within first two lines of any platform.
• Disclosure label must be added from the list of approved labels to ensure average user is able to distinguish editorial and independent user-generated content from promoted content.
• Approved disclosure labels by ASCI include #ad, #collab, #promo, #sponsored or #partnership.
• Influencers have to ensure filters are not used to exaggerate the claims of brands’ social media ads.
• It proposes the manner or the required time period for the visibility of disclosure labels’ depending on the format such as a textual post, length of the videos, live-streams, audio posts or disappearing videos. Ex- For videos that are two minutes or longer, the disclosure label must stay for the entire duration of the section in which the promoted brand, or its features are mentioned.
• It recommends contractual agreement between advertiser and influencer carries clauses pertaining to disclosure, use of filters as well as due diligence.

About ASCI

• It is voluntary self-regulatory organization, registered as a not-for-profit company under section 25 of the Indian Cos. Act.
• It was established in 1985 as a self-regulatory voluntary organization and non-govt body of the advertising industry in India
• It is registered as a not-for-profit company under section 25 of the Indian Companies Act.
• ASCI seek to ensure that advertisements conform to its Code for Self-Regulation, which requires advertisements to be legal, decent, honest and truthful and not hazardous or harmful while observing fairness in competition. ASCI looks into complaints across ALL MEDIA such as Print, TV, Radio, hoardings, SMS, Emailers, Internet / web-site, product packaging, brochures, promotional material and point of sale material etc
• ASCI’s team consists of the Board of Governors, the Consumer Complaints Council (CCC) and its Secretariat.
• It aims to build public confidence in advertising.