ASCI unveils Vision 2032 focused on trust, AI and creator economy

MUMBAI: Advertising is moving at geometric speed, and the watchdog wants its trust game to keep pace. At the Annual General Meeting 2026 of the Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI), chairperson Sudhanshu Vats laid out the industry body’s Vision 2032, calling for a shift from simply policing advertising after violations to building the capabilities needed to prevent them in the first place.

Vats said the advertising ecosystem is operating in a world marked by what he described as a “rapid depletion of trust”, with digital platforms accelerating the pace and complexity of communication. For ASCI, he said, the response cannot simply be faster policing. Instead, the organisation wants to build what he described as a “trust infrastructure” for advertising over the next four to five years.

The shift builds on the work already being undertaken through ASCI Academy. Vats said the Academy represents a move from ASCI’s traditional policing role towards preventive and educational measures, with the objective of helping people understand what constitutes responsible advertising before mistakes reach consumers.

“Better first and foremost to not make a mistake rather than being singled out for having made a mistake,” he said, outlining the thinking behind the approach.

Vats said the fundamental question for the advertising industry is changing. With campaigns being created and distributed faster than ever, the issue is no longer simply whether an advertisement can be published, but whether it can withstand scrutiny once it reaches the public.

“The question is can we defend, explain and sustain the trust at speed,” he said.

That challenge has become more complicated as the line between conventional brand-created advertising and consumer-visible content continues to blur. Campaign durations are shrinking, advertising volumes are rising and user-generated content, creators and decentralised brand voices are reshaping how brands communicate.

Vats noted that advertising is no longer produced solely within the traditional agency-brand ecosystem. The expanding creator economy has brought a new generation of advertisers and content makers who are approaching communication differently.

For ASCI, this means the industry’s ability to understand and manage advertising standards must grow alongside the volume and speed of content.

Vats positioned trust as more than a communications or brand metric. He said the growing risks around scams, misinformation, fraud, manipulated content and harmful material can directly affect businesses.

A problematic piece of content can damage brand sentiment and consumer confidence, while hurried communication that cannot be properly defended can create additional costs for businesses. In his view, trust is therefore increasingly becoming a business issue and an economic asset rather than simply an advertising concern.

The consumer expectation, meanwhile, has not changed despite the rapid evolution of the advertising ecosystem. Consumers still want clear and consistent messages, greater information about who is behind a claim and more transparency around why a particular claim is being made.

The difference is that consumers now have considerably more power to respond.

With everyone carrying a connected device and social platforms giving users a comment section and a like button, opinions can travel almost as quickly as advertising itself. Vats said this has increased scrutiny around issues ranging from public health and online safety to artificial intelligence, sustainability, greenwashing and consumer protection.

The changing relationship between advertising and public policy is another part of ASCI’s Vision 2032.

Vats said the advertising ecosystem needs to be prepared for policy and regulatory changes and understand how they could affect what brands advertise, how they advertise and whom they communicate with.

He cited the Digital Personal Data Protection framework expected to come into play in the following year, alongside other regulatory developments, as areas where advertising will increasingly intersect with public policy.

ASCI, he said, has already begun engaging in this space, including work with government stakeholders and regulatory bodies such as RERA. The organisation has worked with Telangana RERA and Maharashtra RERA, while its engagement with government is also expanding through ASCI Academy.

ASCI Academy, constituted in 2023, is emerging as a key part of this preventive approach.

Vats pointed to 11 thought leadership reports, more than one million students and over 8,000 professionals reached through the Academy’s work. He also noted that the one-million-plus student figure, while significant, remains small against India’s roughly 100 million children, indicating the scale of the opportunity for further expansion.

The Academy is also exploring partnerships with state governments around train-the-trainer models, which Vats said could potentially multiply its reach.

The relationship with government is evolving alongside this expansion. The Joint Secretary of the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting is an ex-officio member of the ASCI Academy, reflecting the role the organisation sees for the Academy in education, thought leadership and training.

Vats said ASCI now wants to take that foundation beyond the Academy itself and develop three centres of excellence over the next four to five years.

The first pillar will focus on legal and policy issues. Vats said the growing overlap between advertising and society makes it important for the industry to understand regulatory developments in a more holistic manner.

The proposed centre is expected to build forums involving industry and legal stakeholders and produce policy briefings, stakeholder dialogues, compliance playbooks, advertising law learning modules and ad-law compendiums.

Vats pointed to ASCI’s work on its ad compendium and partnerships with leading law firms as early steps in this direction. The aim, he said, is to allow the advertising industry to participate in policy discussions in a more informed manner as regulations evolve.

The second pillar will focus on artificial intelligence and responsible innovation in advertising.

Vats described AI as one of the biggest subjects that ASCI needs to understand as the industry moves towards greater speed, scale and variety of content.

The proposed Centre for Responsible Innovation in AI in Advertising will look at how AI can enable advertising while addressing the risks that accompany the technology.

Among the areas identified are AI use cases, synthetic-content disclosures, best practices and the growing use of agentic AI. The centre will also examine the guardrails required as AI agents become more involved in advertising-related activity.

Vats said the first set of work on the emerging use of AI in advertising is already being developed. He also stressed the importance of maintaining consumer trust regardless of whether content is created by humans, with AI assistance or through a combination of both.

The proposed centre will work with like-minded companies and global organisations, with ASCI also drawing on its involvement with international industry bodies.

The third pillar is a Centre for Creator Excellence and Trust, reflecting the rapid expansion of India’s creator economy.

Vats said almost everyone can now be an advertiser or publisher in some form, while influencers and creators have become a more formal part of the advertising ecosystem. He noted that the micro-influencer universe alone could run into very large numbers, potentially close to one million.

That scale brings its own compliance and education challenge.

The proposed centre would focus on helping creators understand responsible advertising practices and giving them tools to operate within the evolving ecosystem. Potential outputs include creator certification, training programmes, research on trust in advertising and dialogues and events around the creator economy.

Vats also highlighted the need to continue studying trust itself. ASCI is beginning what he described as seminal work on trust in advertising, with research expected to feed into the broader Vision 2032 framework.

Vats said the speed of change is now “geometric” rather than linear, making it increasingly difficult for traditional regulatory approaches to keep up with every development after it happens.

That is why the Vision 2032 approach combines ASCI’s established policing role with education, capability building, research and industry engagement.

He summarised the strategy around three messages. First, faster policing alone may not be the answer; educating the ecosystem and building its capabilities could help prevent problems before they occur. Second, trust in advertising is becoming a business issue and needs to be treated as an economic asset. Third, trust requires an infrastructure rather than a single intervention.

The longer-term ambition is to build that infrastructure through ASCI Academy and the three proposed centres, giving brand marketers and advertisers a framework to move quickly while continuing to build consumer trust.

For an advertising ecosystem where content can now be created, published and challenged almost instantly, ASCI’s Vision 2032 is essentially an attempt to make responsibility move at the same speed as creativity.