Mumbai: In March 2017, ASCI’s Consumer Complaints Council (CCC) upheld complaints against 214 out of 280 advertisements. Out of 214 advertisements against which complaints were upheld, 175 belonged to the Healthcare category, 21 to the Education category, followed by 7 in the Food & Beverages category and 11 advertisements from other categories.
The Broadcasters fall in to the others category and the Consumer Complaints Council pf ASCI has upheld against the claims of TV Today Network’s Aaj Tak and TV 18 Broadcast Network’s CNN News18 in their respective advertisements during March 2017 under the following circumstances:
TV Today Network Ltd. (Aaj Tak): The advertisement’s claim, “Aaj Tak’s urban viewership crossed India TV’s All India Viewership” – Source : BARC, 08 Nov 16, TG 15+ NCCS AB, Time Band 2000-2400, imp’000, was not acceptable.It was noted that as per the recently circulated guidelines for Single Event reporting, the announcement of demonetization could be considered as single event reporting. However, the advertiser did not provide any data to show that impressions delivered are 25% above the same time band average for the previous four weeks or that impressions delivered are more than 20% of the full day impressions on the specified day, which is required as per the specific criteria in the BARC guidelines on Single Event reporting. This was in violation of the BARC principles and specific criteria for single event reporting.
TV 18 Broadcast Ltd. (CNN News18): The advertisement had the visual representation of charts suggesting the claims, “CNN-News18 is the No.1 English News Channel”. It was noted that the chart used in the advertisement violates the ‘Visual Representation’ Guidelines – “Visual representations help the intended recipient of a commercial message. They must adhere to the following principles – Axes of a graph must be orthogonal, at 90°, Scaling must be linear, The Y-axis must generally intercept the X-axis at value 0. If an alternative value is used, this must be clearly indicated both on the chart and in its legend.” Though the complaint of misleading comparison was not considered to be objectionable, the visual representation shown is not in compliance with BARC Guidelines and therefore represents a misleading comparison.
