ASCI FY26 Annual Report: 97% of Violative Ads on Digital, Four-Fifths on Meta

The Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI), the self-regulatory body of the advertising industry, on 28 May 2026 released its annual report for the 2025-26 financial year. The report shows that 97.36 per cent of all advertisements found in violation of ASCI’s codes during FY26 ran on digital platforms, while only 2.04 per cent appeared on television and 0.26 per cent in print media.

Among the violative ads on digital platforms, 79.84 per cent ran on Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. Google, which owns YouTube, accounted for 3.59 per cent of the violative ads on digital, while other websites contributed about 13 per cent. ASCI reviewed a total of 11,581 advertisements in FY26, a 21 per cent increase over the previous year, and found 9,611 in violation. About 98 per cent of these ads had to be modified, and 93 per cent were picked up by ASCI’s own monitoring rather than from external complaints.

Offshore betting and gambling promotions emerged as the most violative sector with 6,933 cases, followed by real estate with 643 cases and personal care with 576 cases. About three-fourths of all reviewed ads were judged to promote harmful products or services, and 27 per cent lacked honest representation, misleading consumers about product features, prices or risks.

For exam aspirants, the report links ASCI’s self-regulatory role with the formal regulatory framework — the Consumer Protection Act 2019 and the Central Consumer Protection Authority (CCPA), the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules 2021, and rules on surrogate advertising and misleading endorsements. It also speaks to the broader policy question of regulating unauthorised offshore betting platforms.