Mumbai, India – Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI) has extended its regulatory coverage to monitor digital platforms, and it will be procuring media intel TAM Media Research’s services to run the said function.
The regulation will cover search engines, video sites, news portals and websites for interests like astrology and automobiles.
Initially, ASCI will track the food and beverage as well as the healthcare and education sectors on digital media as they accounted for 79% of the complaints processed by ASCI last year.
According to ASCI, digital advertising made up for 30% of the total media spends in India.
The extended function will be added to the already established print and TV tracking under the council’s National Advertising Monitoring Service (NAMS) for potentially misleading advertisements, which is similarly in collaboration with TAM.
ASCI Chairman Rohit Gupta said, “We live in a world that’s becoming more digital by the day, so a lot of marketing is shifting to such platforms. For a self-regulatory body, it makes sense to expand our monitoring of the offline space to include the online space as well.”
