Advertising Board 2024 Annual Report

On 06.02.2025, the Advertising Board (Board) 2024 Annual Report (Report) was published. The significant issues in the Report are summarized below:

• The Report covers prominent issues in the Board’s decisions, the Board’s activities in 2024 and the Board’s data for 2024. 
• As stated in the Report, the prominent topics in the Board’s decisions in 2024 are as follows:

1. Greenwashing and Unsubstantiated Environmental Claims,
2. Dark Commercial Designs, Manipulative Results,
3. Unauthorized Memberships, Transferred Personal Data,
4. Unrealistic Reviews, Fake Stars and Ratings,
5. Shadow Prices, Deceptive Discounts and
6. Banned Advertisements.

• In addition, the Report discusses the administrative sanctions imposed by the Board in cases of misleading consumers through climate change, environmental claims, dark designs, fake reviews and deceptive discounts.
• Under “Activities Conducted in 2024” section, the Research Report on Advertising and Unfair Commercial Practices in Digital Media and the Report on Supplementary Food Advertisements published by the Board are analyzed.
• Furthermore, it is stated that within the scope of the Board’s Project on Artificial Intelligence Screening of Social Media Advertisements, the content published on social media channels was started to be scanned and analyzed through artificial intelligence.
• The Report emphasizes that the amendment made to Law No. 6502 on the Protection of Consumers on 30.10.2024 introduced lower and upper limits on the fines to be imposed by the Board for unfair commercial practices. The Report also examines the “reconciliation” procedure opened to the addressees for administrative fines imposed by the Board within the scope of the same amendment.
• It is also emphasized that the Board is a signatory to the Joint Open Letter to the Fashion Retail Sector on the Use of Environmental Claims, prepared by the International Consumer Protection and Enforcement Network (ICPEN) to encourage actors in the fashion retail sector to bring their environmental claims into compliance with consumer protection laws.
• Lastly, under the section titled “Data of the Advertising Board for 2024” of the Report, it is stated that the Board decided on 22,299 applications in 2024. Moreover, it is stated that 1,705 advertisements and/or commercial practices within 1,917 files included in the Board’s agenda were found to violate the legislation. In this context, it is emphasized that in 2024, the Board imposed a total administrative fine of 277,664,783.00 TL, of which 269,276,989.00 TL was imposed on the advertiser and 8,387,794.00 TL was imposed on the medium.