According to an industry story, three well-known Indian ministries are working together to create an interministerial committee, aimed to stop deceptive and fraudulent digital platform marketing. This initiative is being led by the Ministries of Information and Broadcasting, Electronics and Information Technology and Consumer Affairs, according to the report. The taskforce will also develop a comprehensive regulatory framework to monitor social media advertisements, ensure compliance and penalise violators.
At the moment, the taskforce's participating ministries deal with various facets of social media advertising. While the Ministry of Consumer Affairs is in charge of overseeing deceptive material and surrogate advertisements, the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting is in charge of overseeing advertisement content. Social media outlets are governed by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology.
"By themselves, each of the three ministries is unable to take up all the social media advertising-related issues," it was said in the report, quoting people familiar with the matter.
The story said that the team is anticipated to begin operations in June. Determining what constitutes deceptive or fraudulent advertising and locating the businesses engaged in these activities will be its top priorities. Laws particularly governing social media advertisements may also be drafted by the taskforce. These advertisements are currently subject to regulations from the Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI), the Consumer Protection Act of 2019, and the Information Technology Act of 2000.
Recently, the Supreme Court required all firms to submit a self-declaration for all advertisements across all media platforms. This decision was in response to a complaint against false medical claims made by Patanjali Ayurved.
Companies must provide evidence of uploading this self-declaration to the broadcaster, publisher, printer, electronic media platform or TV channel, before their ads can go public. Non-compliance could lead to legal consequences, highlighting the seriousness of misleading advertising practices.
To this, ASCI has voiced concerns about implementing the Supreme Court's order due to the vast scale and scope of digital ads. "The requirement laid down by the Supreme Court of self-declarations for all advertisements on all media would indeed be a challenging one to implement given the scale and scope of advertisements, particularly on digital. Advertisers will need to incorporate this as part of their media release timelines. For local and hyper-local channels and press, as well as smaller platforms, the entire information mechanism will need to be incorporated as part of the technology offering. It will also be important to determine what will happen in the case of violations if they should occur despite self-declarations. We will await details from MIB on operationalizing this order," said Manisha Kapoor, chief executive officer and secretary-general, ASCI to Mint.
These concerns underscore the complexity of regulating digital advertising in a rapidly evolving landscape.
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