Following the Supreme Court directive, advertisers and advertising agencies are complying with uploading ‘self-declaration certificate’ for each advertisement whether on TV, radio, digital or print. So far, around 36,000 certificates have been uploaded on both Broadcast Seva Portal (BSP) for TV and radio ads and on the Press Council of India’s (PCI) portal for print and digital and internet ads.
However, advertisers and advertising agencies have told Storyboard18 that the volume of advertisements has been impacted significantly. Mainly because many are still finding it challenging to navigate through the whole process of uploading information for the SDC for multiple ads and the portal lags. Advertisers and agencies are also cautious, partly because of clients’ confidentiality as well.
Read more: Not ‘business as usual’ for advertisers after SDC comes into effect
The SDC mandate against the backdrop of a highly complex and fragmented media landscape and the volume of ads, multiple agencies in the country have come up with AI-based offerings to help advertisers and the related agencies to navigate the process and speed up uploading the SDCs.
For instance, having observed that the major challenge for brands is the automation of processes, the submission of the right information in SDC, and improving the efficiencies of their ad creatives, mFilterIt can now automate the entire process, from detecting violations to SDC upload. It also claims to monitor regulatory adherence, performance improvement, language adaptability, protecting brand image, creative consistency, and creative quality control.
The global fraud detection and prevention company has been monitoring the creative compliance of ads for multiple brands across industries and geographies. It checks pre-publishing and post-publishing compliance and adherence to advertising guidelines and regulatory policies.
“After the Supreme Court’s mandate of submitting a SDC, the need for ensuring compliance and ensuring that there is “no misleading information” has spiked up and requires more vigilance to prevent legal issues. mFilterIt TickR, a creative compliance monitoring tool, ensures that the checks for compliance get automated with AI-ML-driven tech. We simplify creative compliance; a task that takes days can be done in a matter of minutes with automated checks for adherence to various guidelines, including those set by the Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI), the Ministry of Home Affairs, the Surveyor General of India, brand-specific guidelines, and advertising platform best practices,” shared Varun Grover, Brand Safety BU Head, mFilterIt.
For its part, Peach, the ad content management platform, offers mechanisms to streamline compliance. Agencies and advertisers can ensure seamless certification distribution to broadcasters and publishers who will need efficient verification processes. Further to manage logistics challenges, its tool allows the advertiser to attach SDC when uploading ads.
The digital marketing agency, Social Pill, has developed a custom GPT to help advertisers cut down their time spent on submitting or uploading SDC forms — which can range from 2 minutes to 15 minutes per certificate. Using its tool, once the advertisers upload the ad creative to the GPT, it will automatically read the creative and furnish the info that needs to be filled.
Driving efficiency
Impacted due to the incomplete clarity and mechanism on the SDC, advertisers have hinted at pausing their ad activities and adopting a wait-and-watch approach, thus impacting the volume of advertising activity, particularly digital. Advertisers have also called the mechanism “unviable” and shared that the same might also thwart innovation and stifle creativity, and in its place create ‘extreme bureaucracy’.
Acknowledging these issues, the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting will submit an affidavit to the Supreme Court on July 9. However, till then, the compliance is expected.
Read more: D2C brands take direct hit, influencer agencies ‘not fully aware’ of SDC mechanism
Experts shared the AI tools can also drive efficiency with creative compliance, as it also flags off non-compliant text, image, and graphic elements of the creative with natural language processing and frame recognition.
mFilterIt TickR checks creative pre-flight before publication; all advertisers have to do is upload content for an automated check to monitor regulatory guidelines and best practices as per platforms and types of ads. Meanwhile, another tool by the same company, Post-Flight, analyses the acceptance and adoption of ad creatives once they are rolled out and examines how it affects the efficacy of both media and content.
“We have helped multiple brands ensure creative and content compliance across industry segments and categories. Most of them are from the e-commerce segment, with FMCG and BPC brands, major banks, and electronics brands ad campaigns. FMCG and BPC are more vigilant about compliance and performance monitoring, such as checks for best practices to be validated, celebrity detection on ads, checks for intellectual property violations, platform violations, and best practice violations,” said Grover.
In certain cases, after deploying creative monitoring, a brand was able to improve its media efficiency by 35%. Due to regulatory checks, the brand was able to experience better engagement on their posts with good impressions and clicks.