ISA Media Charter-2 for Digital: Focus on brand safety, ad fraud, viewability, data ethics

The Indian Society of Advertisers (ISA) on Tuesday rolled out the second phase of its Media Charter, focussing on digital advertising. This chapter will address four critical areas– brand safety, ad fraud prevention, viewability standards and ethical use of first-party data.

The second phase follows the introduction of the Model Media Agency Agreement last October, which marked the first step in a broader initiative to enhance the media landscape, said Sunil Kataria, chairperson of ISA and CEO of Raymonds Lifestyle.

Speaking to exchange4media, Kataria said that digital media's footprint in India has surged dramatically over the past seven years, now commanding 40% of the total advertising expenditure. “This rapid growth underscores the increasing dominance of digital platforms and highlights the need for advanced measures to address the complexities and challenges inherent in this sector,” Kataria said.

“There are many more challenges to come while handling digital media. You have to be ahead of the curve always,” he added.

“The job of ISA is to disseminate information, knowledge, and work with the industry ecosystem to create a very healthy and responsible and effective way of doing advertising. So, we have identified four challenges, which include how to manage brand safety and brand suitability and ad frauds. As technology evolves, malpractices also evolve on their own. So, how do you ensure there's ROI for the brands and avoid or mitigate any possible ad frauds?” he said.

“Third is viewability. Because you're not just serving impressions, you're trying to serve views. So, how do you define viewability and stay on the course for viewability and get ROI? And last is, how do you build an ethical, transparent, first-party data playbook? So, these are the four themes that have been picked up, which are very crucial to running a good or responsible digital ecosystem in advertising. We can also call them the key challenges,” he explained.

Adding to this, Ankit Desai, ISA Media Forum Co-chair and Head-Media, Digital Marketing and Brand PR, Marico Ltd, said that there are glaring challenges that advertisers face which is why this charter was rolled out.

“I think the key reason why we picked it up is that while there were global conversations and norms around it, I don't think we had enough appreciation, education or conversation about what stands or what holds best for the Indian environment. And I think that's really what we are trying to address with this charter,” Desai said.

Speaking about ensuring creativity and responsibility together in the times of artificial intelligence and digital advancement, Tejas Apte, ISA Media Forum Head and General Manager - Media, South Asia, Unilever, said AI complements human capabilities and is relevant for advertising.

“I think what AI does well is that it acts as a complement to human capabilities. So, let's take Generative AI, which I think is most relevant for advertising industry. In a lot of places now, instead of using artists to illustrate a storyboard, people give prompts and generate a storyboard, or to think how the product should look, either on the shelf or the packaging. You can easily get 10 ideas using Generative AI.

So, Generative AI is an aid to human creativity,” he said adding that AI is used to make decisions on what to serve a consumer. It is gauging consumer's interest and showing the most relevant content to them.

“I think when tech evolves, which should be fairly fast, even advertisers will be in a position to leverage an AI-ML model. This will make makes their advertising better not only from the creative side, but also on the media department side,” Apte said.

In August 2023, the ISA rolled out an initiative, the Model Media Agency Agreement, which is a template for agreements between advertisers and media agencies to establish detailed and precise agreements, considering substantial media flow and complexities of the ecosystem.

In May this year, Kataria announced about ISA’s plan to release these four other initiatives of the charter.

The Indian Society of Advertisers has been the peak national body for advertisers for 70 years and represents the interests of organisations involved in the Indian advertising, marketing and media industry.

It aims to promote, maintain and uphold ethical and economic discipline in advertising.