iWorld
ASCI unveils final guidelines for influencer advertising on digital media
Mumbai: Advertisers now have a clear set of guidelines on which they can base their influencer driven ads/commercials. Industry watchdog – the Advertising Standards Council of India (Asci) – unveiled the final guidelines for influencer advertising on digital media today. The ombudsman had initially released some draft guidelines in February and sought feedback from all stakeholders – advertisers, agencies, influencers and consumers. Asci then incorporated the responses before drawing up the final framework. To ensure a collaborative process and expert inputs, ASCI tied up with Big Bang Social, a leading marketplace for social storytelling, to get India’s leading digital influencers’ views on board.
The new rules will become applicable to commercial messages or advertisements published on or after 14 June 2021. The guidelines clearly lay out the definitions for the terms influencer, virtual influencer, material connection and digital media. Asci has introduced Asci.social platform- a digital platform that will house information about the rules applicable to the community of influencers, marketers, agencies and consumers. Additionally, all promotional content in which they feature will have to mandatory be labelled as such by the influencers. Asci has roped in Reech, a French technology provider to monitor potential violations of the guidelines.
GUIDELINES:
Disclosure: All advertisements published by social media influencers or their representatives, on such influencers’ accounts must carry a disclosure label that clearly identifies it as an advertisement.
Criteria for disclosure :
a. Disclosure is required if there is any material connection between the advertiser and the influencer.
b. Material connection isn’t limited to monetary compensation. And includes anything of value given to mention or talk about the Advertiser’s product or service, like free or discounted products or service or other perks
c. a disclosure is needed even if they weren’t specifically asked to talk about that product or service.
d. Disclosures are required even if the evaluations are unbiased or fully originated by Influencer, so long as there is a material connection between Advertiser and Influencer.
e. If there is no material connection and the influencer is telling people about a product or service they bought and happen to like, that is not considered to be an advertisement and no disclosure is required on such posts.
· Disclosure must be upfront and prominent so that it is not missed by an average consumer
· Any one or more disclosure labels can be used: advertisement, ad, sponsored, collaboration, partnership, employee, free gift
· If the advertisement is only a picture or video post without accompanying text (such as Instagram stories or Snapchat), the disclosure label needs to be superimposed over the picture/video
I. For videos that last 15 seconds or less, the disclosure label must stay for a minimum of 3 seconds.
II. For videos which are 2 minutes or longer, the disclosure label must stay for the entire duration of the section in which the promoted brand is mentioned.
· In live streams, the disclosure label should be announced at the beginning and the end of the broadcast.
· In the case of audio media, the disclosure must be clearly announced at the beginning and at the end of the audio, and before and after every break that is taken in between.
· The disclosure should be in English OR in the language as the advertisement itself in a way that is easy for an average consumer to understand.
Responsibility of disclosure of material connection and also of the content of advertisement is upon the advertiser for whose product or service the advertisement is, and also upon the Influencer.
iWorld
Bill Ackman makes a $64bn bid for Universal Music Group
The hedge fund boss wants to list the world’s biggest record label in New York and thinks he knows exactly what ails it
NEW YORK: Bill Ackman wants to buy the world’s biggest record label. Pershing Square Capital Management, the hedge fund run by the billionaire investor, submitted a non-binding proposal on Tuesday to acquire all outstanding shares of Universal Music Group in a business combination transaction worth roughly $64.4 billion (around 55.8 billion euros).
Under the terms of the offer, UMG shareholders would receive 9.4 billion euros in cash, equivalent to 5.05 euros per share, plus 0.77 shares of a newly created company, dubbed New UMG, for each share held. Pershing Square values the total package at 30.40 euros per share, a 78 per cent premium to UMG’s closing price on April 2.
The deal would see UMG merge with Pershing Square SPARC Holdings, with the combined entity incorporating as a Nevada corporation and listing on the New York Stock Exchange. New UMG would publish financial statements under US GAAP and become eligible for S&P 500 index inclusion. Pershing Square says the transaction is expected to close by year-end, with all equity financing backstopped by Ackman’s firm and its affiliates, and all debt financing committed at signing. The transaction would cancel 17 per cent of UMG’s outstanding shares, leaving New UMG with 1.541 billion shares outstanding.
Ackman has a long history with UMG. Pershing Square first bought approximately 10 per cent of the company from Vivendi in the summer of 2021 for around $4 billion, around the time of UMG’s listing on the Euronext Amsterdam exchange. He has since trimmed that position, raising around $1.4 billion from the sale of a 2.7 per cent stake in March 2025, and resigned from UMG’s board in May 2025, citing new executive and board obligations arising from recent investments.
His diagnosis of UMG’s troubles is blunt. The company’s stock has fallen around 33 per cent over the past twelve months on the Euronext Amsterdam exchange, and Ackman lays out six reasons why. These include uncertainty around the Bolloré Group’s 18 per cent stake in the company, the postponement of UMG’s US listing, the underutilisation of UMG’s balance sheet, the absence of a publicly disclosed capital allocation plan and earnings algorithm, a failure to reflect UMG’s 2.7 billion euro stake in Spotify in its valuation, and what Ackman calls suboptimal shareholder investor relations, communications and engagement.
The Bolloré stake has long cast a shadow over the company. Cyrille Bolloré stepped down from UMG’s board in July 2025 as the Bolloré Group battled the French financial markets regulator over its stake in Vivendi, which holds a further capital interest in UMG. UMG had confidentially filed a draft registration statement with the US Securities and Exchange Commission in July 2025 for a proposed secondary listing in America, but put those plans on hold in March 2026, citing market conditions.
Ackman has kind words for UMG’s management, at least. “Since UMG’s listing, Lucian Grainge and the company’s management have done an excellent job nurturing and continuing to build a world-class artist roster and generating strong business performance,” he said. But he made his diagnosis plain: “UMG’s stock price has languished due to a combination of issues that are unrelated to the performance of its music business and importantly, all of them can be addressed with this transaction.”
In other words, Ackman believes UMG is a great business trapped inside a broken structure. If the board agrees, he intends to fix that, loudly and in New York.
