It has been revealed how much fines the Advertising Board has imposed on companies and social media phenomena that deceive consumers and make deceptive/misleading advertisements in the first four months of 2022. According to the data obtained by the Ministry of Commerce, the Board of Advertisement has scrutinized thousands of files since January in order to identify people and companies making misleading advertisements.
Accordingly, companies that mislead consumers with their promotions were given an administrative fine of millions of lira and a suspension fine. It was noteworthy that most of the files that were found to be against the rules consisted of promotions of the health, food and cosmetics sector.
668 of the 7 thousand files examined were found to be ‘unlawful’
The Board of Advertisement, in the first 4 months of the year, in order to identify companies that made deceptive and misleading promotions. 7 thousand 57 files were examined. As a result of the examinations, it was decided that 668 files were against the rules; 504 of them were found appropriate to stop advertising, and 164 to be fined and suspended. It was stated that the amount of administrative fine applied was over 17 million liras.
While the majority of the files found to be contradictory are made up of promotions related to health, food and cosmetics sectors; These sectors were followed by the promotions of technology, durable consumer goods and tourism sectors.
On the other hand, the board also examined the advertising activities of multi-follower social media users known as ‘influencers’ during the same period. While 12 files were examined in total, it was concluded that 10 of them were against the legislation. While 8 of the aforementioned files were suspended, suspension and administrative fines were imposed on 2 of them.