The self-declaration certificate every advertisement now needs

Since 18 June 2024, a new advertisement cannot be issued, telecast, aired or published in India without a self-declaration certificate. The requirement came from a Supreme Court order in May 2024, the portals went live that June, and it applies whether you are buying a television break, a full page in a daily, or a set of Meta ads.

It is not a difficult piece of compliance. It is a form, and it takes minutes. It holds campaigns up anyway, because it sits in the gap between the advertiser, the agency and the media owner, and each of them can assume one of the others did it.

What you are actually declaring

The certificate says two things about the advertisement: that it makes no misleading claim, and that it meets the rules that apply to the medium it is running in. For television that means the Cable Television Networks Rules. For print it means the Press Council's norms.

Read that again, because it is the part people skim. You are certifying your own claims. Not your agency's creative, not the channel's schedule. If the film says your clinic is the best in the city, or your finish lasts ten years, you are the one who has signed to say that is not misleading.

That is worth a conversation with whoever writes your copy. Most claims that would fail this test were never necessary in the first place, and the page reads better without them.

Where it goes

Two portals, split by medium.

Broadcast Seva takes television and radio. The Press Council portal takes print and digital or online advertising. A campaign that runs a commercial on a Kannada channel and a quarter page in a daily has to be declared in both places, because the two systems do not talk to each other.

The certificate is signed by an authorised signatory of the advertiser. An agency can do the uploading, and most agencies now do, but the signature is the business's.

Where it goes wrong

Nobody owns it. This is almost always the reason, and it shows up the same way every time.

The media buyer assumes the creative agency has filed it, because the creative agency made the film. The creative agency assumes the client has, because the client signs it. The client assumes it came with the booking. Then the channel asks for the reference before it will schedule, and a slot bought six weeks ago cannot run on Friday.

Put a name against it in your campaign sheet, next to the material deadline. It belongs in the same row, because it has the same consequence if it is late.

Counting the advertisements wrongly. One campaign is rarely one advertisement. A thirty second film, its twenty and ten second cutdowns, the Kannada dub, and four print sizes are not one thing with one declaration. Settle how many you are filing before the shoot, not after.

Leaving it to the end. The declaration is quick, but it describes a finished advertisement. If you file it against the film and then change a claim in the edit, you are running something you did not declare.

What it does not do

It is not an approval. Nobody reviews your advertisement and tells you it is fine. You are declaring, and the responsibility stays with you.

It also does not replace anything else the medium asks for. Channels have their own paperwork and their own category rules. Some product categories need a great deal more than this, and a few cannot be advertised at all in the form their owners would like. If you sell in one of those categories, your legal adviser is the right first call, not your media plan.

What to do next

If you are running advertising now, ask one question of whoever handles it: show me the declarations for the creatives currently live. If the answer takes more than a day to produce, the process does not exist yet and it is worth building before the next campaign rather than during it.

If you are planning a campaign, add a line to the sheet beside each piece of material, with a name and a date. That is the whole fix.

We handle this as part of running a campaign, and we would rather raise it in the scoping conversation than three days before a booked slot. Rules like this change, and the current position on any of it is worth confirming when you are ready to run rather than taking from a page written earlier.