Ministry of Information and Broadcasting in order to adhere to recent judgement of Hon’ble Supreme Court on curbing misleading advertisements has introduced process of uploading of advertisements on the Broadcast Seva Portal of the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (MIB) for TV and Radio Advertisements and on Press Council of India’s portal prior to publication on Print and Digital/Internet Advertisements.

On one side this is a welcome move to promote ethical marketing and business promotion, however the process have some ambiguities and challenges. We are trying to highlight few of such challenges in this blog.

1. Business entities also make lot of claims about their product or services on their website. Will website be also construed as advertisement of purpose these guidelines?
2. E-commerce entities (aggregators) display third party products or services on their websites and also have various claims on the products and services. Will e-commerce entities (aggregators) be considered as publisher to ensure compliance of guidelines by the business entities displaying their products or services?
3. What if the there is a change in URL of link of video uploaded on prescribed portals for submissions of ads in the future due to tech upgrades or discontinuation of business/product/services or termination of contract with service provider etc?
4. Is there any time limit for maintaining the URL having link of videos of ads as uploaded on prescribed portals?
5. Is there any time period of retention of documents, videos and other record by advertisers, advertising agency, broadcasters or publishers regarding compliances of these guidelines?
6. If no limit then it will pose problem of storage and security cost in future?
7. Micro and small enterprises generally don’t have relevant IT skillset and Infra manage copy of proposed advertorials through URLs?
8. As per the guidelines, no new advertisement should be published from 18th of June, 2024 without being submitted on the designated portals. However there must have been thousands of advertorials already scheduled for being published or broadcasted. In the shorter time frame it would be difficult for large corporates to plan for uploading all such advertorials before 18th June, 2024 due to for following reasons :

• Obtaining requisite approvals from Board, MD or authorities for appointing an authorised signatory;
• Development of IT platform to host, secure and store all the advertisements;
• Uploading of such advertisements on IT platform; and
• Then upload them on the designated portals.

9. There is no provision to change the particulars of submitted at the time of registration like change in signatory, name or address of the company.
10. There is no provision to correct error or modify the particulars of advertisements as submitted on the prescribed portals.

Few of our suggestions for creating ease for business entities to comply with the directions are as under:

1. These guidelines should be made effective not earlier than 6 months from the date of release;
2. Facility to upload videos directly upto particular slide in the interest of advertisers to save their cost of IT infra management and safety.
3. In the interest of consumers, the acknowledgement number issued by Department should be mentioned on ads.
4. Consumer should be able to check the details of submission with department using such acknowledgments numbers.
5. There should be time limited of 5 years to retain the records of advertisement and declarations.

Disclaimer:  This is an effort by Lexcomply.com, to contribute towards improving compliance management regime. User is advised not to construe this service as legal opinion and is advisable to take a view of subject experts.