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Stream/Area:
-
Subject:
-
Paper ID:
IJSREM62051
Volume:
10 |
4 |
April 2026
Pages:
1-6
Publication Frequency:
Monthly (12 issues per year)
License:International Journal of Scientific Research in Engineering and Management follows the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0) License, allowing free use and distribution with proper attribution.
independent researcher
Symbiosis International (Deemed University), Pune
This research paper investigates the complaints for misleading advertisements in India between 2022 and 2025 and the Advertising Standards Council of India’s (ASCI) insightful reports on various issues related to advertising and protection of consumer interest. This research analyses the last three years of complaint data in the annual reports released by ASCI. This study finds that people are moving away from style advertisements to advertisements on digital platforms, where most of the problems happen now, about 97% of the time. The research shows how the Advertising Standards Council of India has changed the way it works it used to look into complaints. Now it uses a system that uses artificial intelligence to keep an eye on things in the digital platform advertisements. The Advertising Standards Council of India is using intelligence to watch the digital platform advertisements. This new system now deals with 93 per cent of all cases. The main things we found out are that people are following the rules more and more, with 88 per cent of them doing so by the end of 2025. There are new problems that are making people lose trust, such as dark patterns, betting illegally from other countries and influencers not saying or showing what they are really doing or using. ASCI is the self-regulatory body and the Central Consumer Protection Authority (CCPA) both work together; these are essential to protect the vulnerable consumers in the high-speed digital economy.
KEYWORDS
Misleading advertising is not a bug of India's digital advertising system. The entire system is currently built around the feature. There are immediate, evidence based actions required to address this: 1. ASCI must stop negotiating only with individual brands, and extend its proven partnership model to require mandatory pre-screening of high risk ads directly by Meta, Google and YouTube 2. CCPA now has a complete four-year evidence base to begin formal, targeted enforcement against top influencers for ongoing disclosure violations. 3. Brand managers must accept that the current "run and fix" strategy is commercially self-defeating, and will cost them far more in lost long term loyalty than it generates in short term sales.
ACR Journal. (2025). Shopping lies and consumer trust in the age of online marketing. Advances in Consumer Research, 1(1). https://acr-journal.com/article/904 2. Ahmed, A. (2025). Broken promises: The impact of misleading marketing on consumer trust and brand loyalty. European Economic Letters, 15(2). http://eelet.org.uk 3. ASCI. (2022). Annual Complaints Report 2021–22. Advertising Standards Council of India, Mumbai. www.ascionline.in/reports/ 4. ASCI. (2023). Annual Complaints Report 2022–23. Advertising Standards Council of India, Mumbai. www.ascionline.in/reports/ 5. ASCI. (2024). Annual Complaints Report 2023–24. Advertising Standards Council of India, Mumbai. www.ascionline.in/reports/ 6. Consumer Protection Act. (2019). The Consumer Protection Act, 2019 (No. 35 of 2019). Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Government of India. 7. Cowton, C. J. (1998). The use of secondary data in business ethics research. Journal of Business Ethics, 17(4), 423–434. 8. EY & FICCI. (2023). Indian media and entertainment industry report 2023. As cited in ASCI Annual Complaints Report 2022–23. 9. Khan, Sheeraz, & Siddiqui. (2024). Effect of deceptive advertisements on consumer buying behaviour in personal care products. ResearchGate. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/387570384 10. Krippendorff, K. (2018). Content analysis: An introduction to its methodology (4th ed.). SAGE. 11. Patel, et al. (2023). Social media influence on Indian consumer purchasing decisions. IJNTI, 3(3).
Publication Date
4/30/2026
Peer Review Type
Double-Blind Peer Review
Review Rounds: 2
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Conflict of Interest
The authors declare no conflict of interest related to this research work.
Funding Information
No funding information available for this research.
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