Education, health and personal care ads worst offenders: ASCI report

Education, healthcare and personal care are the most violative categories of ads, according to the annual complaints report of India’s advertising regulator for the last financial year.

The Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI) on Tuesday released its annual complaints report for April 2021-March 2022, taking into account print, television and digital media as it processed 5,532 ads — a sharp rise of 62 per cent from 2020-21.

It processed 7,631 complaints — an increase of 25 per cent from last year. Of these, 75 per cent were taken up suo motu by the regulatory body’s own artificial intelligence-based tracking system. Consumer complaints made up 21 per cent of the pie, a sharp rise of 186.5 per cent, after the launch of ASCI’s influencer guidelines last year.