ISA Charter-2 for Focus on 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.