The Digital Advertisement Policy of 2023, released by the Central Bureau of Communication (CBC) on Friday, lays down the requirements for empanelling websites, mobile applications, digital audio platforms, streaming platforms and social media platforms so that they can display government advertisements.
The policy, which is valid for five years, replaces 2016’s Policy Guidelines for Empanelment and Rate Fixation for Central Govt Advertisements on Websites. The 2016 policy was released by the erstwhile Directorate of Advertising and Visual Publicity (DAVP) which was integrated under the CBC in 2017.
Citing the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India’s Indian Telecom Services Performance Indicators January-March 2023, the policy said that there are over 880 million internet users in India and more than 1,172 million telecom subscribers as of March 2023.
“The government must now take the public service messages to the platforms where people allocate their attention. Additionally, the vast amounts of probabilistic consumer behaviour data available for use by advertisers on these platforms allow sending context-specific and user-specific communication with high precision and low ad expenditure leaks, enabling efficient utilisation of public money,” it said.
Currently, under CBC, only 1% of all advertising is digital, Apurva Chandra, the information and broadcasting secretary, said.
“Until now, in digital advertising, we were advertising on only news channels and their websites. Now, we have made a conscious decision to advertise on whatever the public consumes,” Chandra said.
Under the Print Media Advertisement Policy of 2020, websites of newspapers are not covered. Through the new policy, news websites and their apps can seek empanelment. It, however, will leave out e-papers, that is, digital replicas of print editions. Thus, government ads reach a digital audience despite having paid for only the print version. It is understood that this issue will be reconciled by the CBC though the timeline is currently unknown.
A major advantage of digital advertising is targeted advertising. “For example, if it is youth, we will go more towards music and podcasts. If it is housewives, we will go to cookery shows. It is linked to the interest as in digital it is targeted advertising. This policy will allow us to shortlist such websites and apps depending on their comScore, depending on their subscriber base, and the rates will also be linked to their subscriber base and overall views,” he said.
The Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023, prohibits any data fiduciary from directing targeted ads at children, that is, individuals under the age of 18 years.
The new policy allows for the empanelment of five kinds of entities: internet websites and mobile apps (news websites and apps, travel websites, etc.); over the top (OTT) video on demand platforms (such as Disney+Hotstar); digital audio platforms (such as Spotify); social media platforms (such as Facebook, Twitter); and media agencies for digital campaigns. Any “innovative and futuristic platforms” can be onboarded by the CBC with the approval of a six-member committee that will be headed by the director general or the principal director general of the CBC.
The policy gives CBC the right to decline or suspend empanelment of any entity if its “content is found to be anti-national/obscene/indecent/anti-social/violative of communal harmony and national integrity or deemed objectionable or unsuitable for Government communication in any form or is in violation of Information Technology (Guidelines for Intermediaries and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021 and other laws, regulations or guidelines as may be applicable”. The policy states that the CBC decision will be final.
This echoes the 2016 policy to a large extent, except the previous policy required the content to be “deemed objectionable” by a “competent Committee”. The new policy does not specify who will deem content as objectionable.
If an empanelled entity refuses to accept and carry advertisements by the CBC on more than one occasion, it can be debarred from government advertisements for the remaining period of its panel tenure. Allocation of advertisements to empanelled entities will be determined by the CBC in consultation with the advertising ministry or department or PSU.
Websites, mobile apps, streaming platforms and digital audio platforms will have to be in existence for at least one year under the same name and be incorporated in India to apply. Foreign companies may be eligible if the website/mobile apps are at least a year old, wholly owned company registered in India which looks after their Indian advertisement business. Websites and apps must have at least 250,000 average monthly unique users in the preceding six months to apply while streaming platforms and digital audio platforms must have at least 500,000 such users in the same time period.
Social media platforms must be at least six months old to apply and have at least 25 million average monthly unique users in the preceding three months.
To verify user counts submitted by the entities, CBC will use data provided by comScore or Google Analytics or other such “credible” agencies with “industry-wide acceptance”.
Empanelling social media platforms
The CBC has defined a social media platform as a “web-based and mobile-based Internet application that allows the creation, access and exchange of user-generated content” where the content may be in the form of “text, audio-visual, graphics, animation of any other form prescribed by CBC from time to time”.
Social media platforms that seek empanelment must have an online panel for booking space/inventory. This panel must be available for all advertisers and must be provided to CBC along with the required training. Social media platforms will also have to give CBC a real-time dashboard which shows “actual quantified outcome of the campaign” in a CBC-approved format.
The CBC has recognised that social media platforms use dynamic pricing and auction. “CBC will participate in the bidding process for buying inventory/space for government messages,” the policy states.
Any social media platform that has been “suspended/blacklisted” by the IT ministry or any other government entity will not be eligible to apply. This is a reference to blocking under Section 69A of the Information Technology Act or blocking orders issued by MIB under Part III of the IT Rules, 2021. While most blocking orders are against particular channels or URLs, the IT ministry had blocked TikTok in 2020 in the wake of the Indo-China border clashes in Galwan Valley. Thus, TikTok cannot apply but Facebook, Twitter, etc can since the platforms themselves have not been blocked.
While the CBC will prioritise advertising directly on different digital and social media platforms, at times it will need to empanel media agencies to “roll out digital campaigns”. This will happen only when the digital platform does not enter into agreement with government bodies and prefers ads only through agencies; or when the required campaign demands services that the digital platform does not provide. Chandra cited Meta as an example of the former.
YouTube presents an interesting conundrum. It is a social media intermediary as well as a video-on-demand streaming service as it has premium offerings. If YouTube wants to apply, it is understood that it would be left up to YouTube on how it wants to apply --- as a social media platform or as an OTT VoD platform.
At this stage, it is not clear what will happen if social media platform (like YouTube) or a digital audio platform (like Spotify) refuses to apply for empanelment but content creators on these platforms, with millions of unique viewers and listeners, want to be empanelled.
Empanelled OTT platforms and digital audio platforms will also be eligible to participate in production of “embedded/in-film advertisement/promotion/branding activities” when the CBC issues such a letter of intent.
