Asci upholds Tata Sky's complaint against Airtel's DTH campaign:
BS
The competition among the half a dozen rival direct-to-home (DTH) operators in the country has once again
spilled over to the advertising arena. The Advertising Standards Council of India (Asci) has upheld a
complaint by Tata Sky against rival Airtel Digital TV for misleading the consumers in its ?Dil Titli? television
campaign featuring Saif Ali Khan and Kareena Kapoor. In its complaint to Asci made in November 2009,
Tata Sky had called the campaign ?misleading? for suggesting that the picture quality of Airtel Digital TV was
superior as it used the MPEG4 and DVB-S2 technology. The Asci, in its final hearing last week, upheld the
Tata Sky complaint and may soon ask Airtel to either modify or withdraw the campaign, sources in Asci said.
The Asci is the apex self-regulation body of the advertising industry. It deals with the complaints received
from consumers and industry against advertisements that are considered as false, misleading, indecent,
illegal, leading to unsafe practices, or unfair to competition.
In 2008, Tata Sky had dragged its rival Dish TV before the fair trade regulator ? Monopolies and Restrictive
Trade Practices Commission ? terming the Dish TV advertisement offering free set-top boxes as
?misleading? and ?deceptive?.
Tata Sky and Dish TV, the top two private DTH operators in the market, use MPEG2 technology while the
remaining DTH operators, including Sun Direct, Digital TV, Big TV and D2H, use MPEG4 technology.
In its complaint to Asci on the Airtel Digital TV advertisement issue, Tata Sky said that while MPEG4 was a
video compression standard and DVB-S2 was a satellite transmission standard, both these specifications
had no relationship with video quality. ?MPEG4 is a video compression technology that helps in packing
more channels within a given bandwidth. This has no relation with the picture quality, and it has been
scientifically proven. This is what we have told Asci. We are not there to stop anyone from advertising, we
just want the right message to go to the consumers,? said Vikram Mehra, CMO, Tata Sky. When contacted,
Airtel Digital TV CEO Ajay Puri said: ?We did receive a communication from Asci asking us to explain the
MPEG4 technology. We have not received any notice from them to withdraw the campaign yet.? ?MPEG4 is
a proven better compression technology and that is what we have said in our communications to the
consumers. Our ads are not directed against anybody,? he said. Industry sources, however, said that since
the DTH market had been extremely competitive, such ad campaigns may affect the consumers decision to
opt for one DTH operator over another. Currently, between the six DTH players, an average of around
18,000-20,000 DTH connections are being sold each day with Airtel Digital TV alone selling over 7,000
connections, higher than some of its rivals.
?We are selling 200,000 DTH connections each month,? confirmed Puri. Tata Sky, which is now the third-
largest DTH operator behind Dish TV and Sun Direct, is adding over 100,000 subscribers per month. ?Till
November 2009, our subscriber base stood at 4.5 million ?on a monthly basis, we have been selling far
more than 100,000 subscribers,? Mehra of Tata Sky said.