Policy for digital government ads released

The Digital The policy, which is valid for five years, replaces 2016’s Policy Guidelines for Empanelment and Rate Fixation for Central Govt 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 new policy allows for the empanelment of five kinds of entities: internet websites and mobile apps ; over the top video on demand platforms ; digital audio platforms ; social media platforms ; and media agencies for digital campaigns. 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 will also have to give CBC a real-time dashboard which shows “actual quantified outcome of the campaign” in a CBC-approved format. 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”.