Mumbai: India’s advertising watchdog and the agency that runs the country’s best-known audience measurement service will monitor for violations all advertisements across the print and electronic media.
The Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI), the country’s apex self-regulatory body for advertising content, announced on Tuesday the creation of a National Advertising Monitoring Service (Nams) in collaboration with TAM Media Research Pvt. Ltd.
AdEX India, a specialist division of TAM that currently captures data on advertising categories and volumes in print and television, will work with ASCI to monitor hundreds of TV channels and newspapers for commercials that violate the ASCI advertising code.
The monitoring service will check for ads that are either misleading or make false claims about the product or services they feature in their communication. ASCI is expected to invest nearly Rs 20 lakh on the ad monitoring services slated to begin 1 May.
“Nams will strengthen the ad self-regulation redressal process manifold as we will be able to proactively monitor wider numbers of ads,” said I. Venkat, chairman of ASCI. “This will be in the best interest of the Indian consumers as it will significantly reduce release of misleading advertising in India.”
Last year, ASCI received 2,947 complaints against 177 ads between April 2011 to March 2012. According to ASCI, this increase in complaints is a result of awareness campaigns. Between April 2010 and March 2011, ASCI had received 777 complaints for 190 ads.
According to the agreement with ASCI, AdEx India will identify ads that are in potential violation of the ASCI code for advertisers.
“Nams will track and assess nearly 327 channels and 800 publications in various languages at a pan-India level,” said L.V. Krishnan, CEO of TAM Media Research. “These ads will be those that have been categorized as specifically violating ASCI’s ad code related to unsubstantiated, misleading or false claims in the advertisement.”
AdEx India will monitor ads in the automobile, banking, financial services and insurance, consumer products and healthcare, education, real estate and telecom service businesses.
There will be Knowledge Seminars, which will be of interest to professionals from Media, Interactive and Creative fraternity over four half-day sessions. Announcements regarding the speakers for the Conclave as well as the Knowledge Seminars will be made soon. “We plan to add to the mix of speakers including a few Indian innovators from allied fields. We hope to make Goafest a continuing platform for learning, celebrating, fellowship and fun,” added Srinivasan Swamy.
Advertising that is seen as violating the code will be forwarded to ASCI. The code states that ASCI will aim “to ensure the truthfulness and honesty of representations and claims made by advertisements and to safeguard against misleading advertisements”.
Prahlad Kakkar, a renowned ad film maker, is of the view that guidelines cannot be set in absolute terms. People involved in the process of scanning the advertisements should be able to judge objectively, he said. “The panel should include sociologists and child psychologists to monitor ads,” he said.