MUMBAI: Even if you are the market leader, you won‘t be spared for misleading advertising. This is the message that the Advertising Standards Council of India (Asci) wants to make crystal clear.

In the latest development, Asci has pulled up the leading direct-to-home (DTH) service provider company Dish TV for claiming to have 50 per cent of the market share in its advertisement.
 
The Consumer Complaints Council (CCC) of the Asci had received a complaint against Dish TV‘s ad that had a punch line of "Half the nation loves Dish TV.‘‘

"The CCC concluded that as the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) data states, Dish TV has a 31.6 per cent of the market share; the claim, half the nation loves Dish TV, is misleading," Asci said.

Asci has asked Dish TV to modify the advert.

Dish TV, in the advertisement, had quoted the Indian Readership Survey (IRS) data of Q2 2010. The ads appeared in some newspapers earlier this year.
 
However, Asci noted that IRS is only a survey report that is neither comprehensive nor accurate. "IRS data or any data published by a private organisation can therefore not be relied on as an authentic source of information," Asci said.

According to Asci, Trai has reported the installed subscriber base for the second quarter of the calendar year 2010 as 23.77 million. The financial result published by Dish TV for the same quarter indicated a gross subscriber base of 7.5 million which translates to a market share of 31.6 per cent.

"In light of the above, the campaign is false and factually incorrect," the Asci ruled.