Surrogate advertising and influencers in India: the CCPA 2022 test and where brands cross it

A surrogate advertisement is an ad for a product that cannot be advertised, made to look like an ad for a product that can. The Central Consumer Protection Authority's 2022 misleading-advertisement guidelines prohibit it, and a creator's sponsored post is an advertisement for this purpose. If a creator is paid to show a "soda" in a whisky brand's colours, or a "news site" built to look like a betting app, the brand is exposed even though the product shown is lawful.

This post sets out what the guidelines say as officially reported, how ASCI tests a brand extension, and the category rules most likely to reach a creator campaign. It is a narrow slice of our ASCI influencer guidelines explainer and our complete guide to influencer marketing in India, and it should be read with the brand-side compliance checklist, whose first gate is this screen.

What the 2022 guidelines say

The Guidelines for Prevention of Misleading Advertisements and Endorsements for Misleading Advertisements, 2022 were notified by the CCPA on 9 June 2022 under section 18 of the Consumer Protection Act, 2019. The Press Information Bureau's release of 10 June 2022 says they define "bait advertisement" and "surrogate advertisement". The Gazette text is precise.

Rule 2(h) defines a surrogate advertisement as an advertisement for goods, product or service whose advertising is otherwise prohibited or restricted by law, made by circumventing that prohibition or restriction and portraying it to be an advertisement for other goods, product or service whose advertising is not prohibited or restricted.

Rule 6(1) says no surrogate or indirect advertisement shall be made.

Rule 6(2) gives the test. An ad is surrogate or indirect if it does either of two things:

1. It indicates or suggests, directly or indirectly, to consumers that it is an ad for the restricted product.
2. It uses any brand name, logo, colour, layout or presentation associated with the restricted product.

There is a safe harbour in the proviso. Mere use of a brand or company name that may also be applied to a restricted product is not surrogate advertising if the ad is not otherwise objectionable under the guidelines.

Rule 3 applies the guidelines to all advertisements "regardless of form, format or medium", and to the manufacturer, service provider or trader, to any advertising agency, and to any endorser whose services are used. A creator, an agency and a brand are therefore all inside the rule. For how penalties reach each of them, see our post on brand liability for influencer posts.

The two cues in practice

Rule 6(2) is a test about what the consumer sees, not about the advertiser's intent. Those two cues turn into questions you can ask of any draft.

The last row comes from ASCI, not the CCPA, and it is where numbers appear.

ASCI's brand-extension test

ASCI's Code says ads for restricted products must not circumvent the restriction by posing as ads for other products. In judging a case it looks at three things: whether the unrestricted product is produced and distributed in reasonable quantities, given the scale of the advertising, the media and the markets targeted; whether the ad carries direct or indirect clues that it is really for the restricted product; and, as with the CCPA, it does not treat the shared brand name as objectionable by itself.

ASCI's guideline of 23 November 2023 turns the first point into criteria for a "genuine" extension of a product such as liquor or tobacco:

The ratio counts media spend, payments contracted to celebrities for appearing in the ad and for brand endorsement, and production spend. ASCI does not say whether a micro-creator's fee counts, so assume it does. If your client is a restricted-category parent, ask for the independent certificate before the influencer budget is approved. A shortfall is cheaper to learn at brief stage than from a complaint.

The categories most likely to reach a creator campaign

Online money games and betting

The Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Act, 2025 defines an "online money game" as an online game, whether based on skill, chance or both, played by paying fees, depositing money or other stakes in expectation of winning. E-sports are excluded. Section 6 says no person shall make, cause to be made, aid, abet or induce any advertisement, in any media including electronic means, that directly or indirectly promotes or induces any person to play an online money game. The Act's preamble names celebrity and influencer endorsements as a concern.

PIB's reply of 18 March 2026 gives the penalties: advertising such a game is punishable with imprisonment of up to two years, or a fine up to ₹50 lakh, or both. A second or later conviction carries at least two years, up to three, and a fine of at least ₹50 lakh up to ₹1 crore.

Two cautions. Section 1(3) leaves the commencement date to a Government notification, and we did not verify that notification; ask counsel to confirm the date. And the statutory definition is wide. A fantasy or card app that takes entry fees for prizes needs a written status confirmation from the client, because you cannot rely on a "skill game" label.

Offshore betting

Betting platforms based abroad had been the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting's target before the Act. Its advisories of 13 June 2022, 3 October 2022 and 6 April 2023 told media to refrain from betting ads and surrogate products. The October 2022 release described offshore platforms using "news" websites as a surrogate product, with logos closely resembling the betting brands. On 21 March 2024 the Ministry advised all endorsers and influencers not to promote offshore betting and gambling platforms, including through surrogate advertisements. It warned that non-compliance may lead to proceedings under the Consumer Protection Act, 2019, including removal of posts or accounts, and it reiterated a CCPA advisory of 6 March 2024.

ASCI's numbers show the scale. Offshore betting was the largest sector overall in FY2025-26, with 6,933 cases, and illegal betting was 54 percent of influencer violations. ASCI says 854 influencer violations were identified between April and December 2025, including accounts entirely given over to offshore betting content, and that these ads travel through influencers, affiliate networks, social groups and messaging platforms. No brief should contain this category.

Tobacco

The Cigarettes and Other Tobacco Products Act, 2003, section 5(1), says no person shall take part in any advertisement that directly or indirectly suggests or promotes the use or consumption of cigarettes or any other tobacco products. Section 5(3) separately bars promoting tobacco, or its trade mark or brand name, under a contract or otherwise in exchange for a sponsorship, gift, prize or scholarship. Section 22 sets punishment on conviction: up to two years or a fine up to ₹1,000, or both, and for a later conviction up to five years and a fine up to ₹5,000. The fines are small, but the prison term and the "take part" wording apply to a paid creator as much as to a company.

What a brand should do

1. Ask the client one question at the brief: is any product in the family one whose advertising is restricted or prohibited? If yes, escalate before shortlisting.
2. Get the extension's evidence in writing: registration, sales certificates and the ad-spend ratio, signed off by the client's finance or legal head.
3. Hold the creative to the two cues. No parent brand name, logo, colours, layout or presentation. No wink to the parent in captions, hashtags or audio.
4. Take a written warranty that the advertised product is not in a restricted or prohibited category, and that the client will tell you if its status changes.
5. Say no. If you cannot tell whether a cue is surrogate, treat it as one. Creator posts are public and are sampled by ASCI's own monitoring, which supplied 93 percent of its cases in FY2025-26.

Our gaming and esports page explains how we cast creators for permitted gaming categories, and our strategy service includes the category screen. For how the CCPA's wider endorsement rules apply, read our post on endorsement guidelines under consumer law. For label wording, see disclosure hashtags. Rule 8 of the same guidelines, on children, is covered in children in influencer ads.

What we could not source

We did not source the rules for alcohol advertising on digital media, which depend on state excise law. We did not open the 2004 rules under the tobacco Act that define indirect advertisement. We saw a listing of a further Ministry advisory on celebrity and influencer endorsements of offshore betting, dated June 2026, but could not read it. And we found no published CCPA action against an influencer for surrogate advertising. Ask counsel about each.

To check a restricted-adjacent brief before creators are approached, ask for a creator plan and we will run the category screen first. See also our ASCI guide for how ASCI complaints work, and the blog for more rules explainers.

This is general information, not legal advice.