India’s advertising regulator, the Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI), has onboarded Aditya Swamy, Director of Google India. Sandeep Bhushan, Head of India Global Marketing Solutions at Facebook, has also joined the board as a special invitee.

The 36-year-old ASCI also announced the launch of a new logo and said its focus would be on digital advertising. To be ahead of the curve in the digital space, it has streamlined guidelines for digital advertising and formulated rules to monitor advertisements on various social media platforms also.

The onboarding of Aditya Swamy and Sandeep Bhushan will help the Indian regulator to formulate better policies and guidelines for the industry.

Subhash Kamath, Chairman, ASCI, said it is extremely important that ASCI collaborates with and learn from the leaders. Google and Facebook are the biggest digital players he added.

According to a recent report by Dentsu, digital ad spends in India grew by 20 percent in 2019 to 29.4 percent in 2021 while television grew by 7.7 percent in the same period. Television was the preferred and most-used advertising medium.

The report also said the digital market share of 35 percent has overtaken print media, which has a 16 percent market share, and is fast approaching the television medium, which has a lion’s share of 45 percent, as per the 2021 estimates by media agency GroupM.

The digital medium grew quicker and continues to expand due to availability of cheap data and smartphones along with the pandemic that ensured extended lockdowns was the norm.

(Edited by : Shoma Bhattacharjee)