With the steady increase of new sectors in the digital economy, the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting has also tightened the screws and focused on those sectors. In an annual complaints report, issued by the Advertising Standard Council of India (ASCI), it has been found that crypto and gaming have emerged as top violators of the ASCI guidelines during the 2021-22 cycle.
As per the report, of 5,532 total ads processed during the tenure of April 2021 to March 2022, about 48% of them belonged to the digital medium. About 43% of these objectionable digital advertisements were published on Instagram, YouTube (28%) Twitter (6%), Facebook (3%), and other websites (18%).
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“2021-22 was the year we followed through on our promise of increasingly monitoring the digital media given the way it has been dominating the advertising landscape. We invested heavily in technology and that has worked quite well. We also upgraded our complaints system which has made it very easy for consumers to register their complaints and for advertisers to respond to it,” said Chairman of ASCI Subhash Kamath.
In 2021, ASCI released its first set of guidelines for “consumers to distinguish between something that is promoted with an intention to influence consumers’ opinion or behavior for an immediate or commercial gain.”
In another report published by GroupM, it has been observed that advertisers have increased their spending on digital media significantly. As per the findings, digital advertisement spending is set to overtake television in 2022, accounting for a 45% share of the total pie.
Meanwhile, Crypto and online gaming continue to come out as the fastest emerging in the digital segment who are heavily investing on advertisements and digital marketing. Crypto ad’s had a heavy say in occupying the digital market. However, it has slowed down a touch after its downfall in the investment market recently.
Talking about real money gaming, the companies have also started investing heavily on the digital market to expand its reach among the masses particularly the youth. As per a report by EY and FICCI, the online gaming segment increased by 28% to reach INR 101 billion with real-money gaming accounting for more than 70% of segment revenues.