Why ASC rejections feel like they're rising — and what to do about it

Walk into any Manila agency these days and ask the production head how many ads got revisions or rejections last quarter. The answer will sound off. Five years ago a clean first-pass screening was the norm for routine FMCG creative. Now agencies are budgeting one or two revision rounds into the launch timeline as standard practice.

It's not your imagination. Three structural shifts are making compliance harder, and there's a workflow change that absorbs the new reality without slowing your launch calendar.

1. The Code got stricter in 2024

The April 2024 revision of the ASC Code of Ethics and Manual of Procedures tightened guidance in several areas at once: digital and influencer disclosures, comparative-advertising substantiation standards, and category rules in banking, food, and pharma.

If your compliance playbook was written against the older edition, you're catching up in real time on the things that used to slide. Influencer paid-partnership disclosure in captions, in particular, is a common silent fail — the ad gets screened, the influencer post goes live without the disclosure, and the brand carries the liability.

2. Substantiation expectations have tightened

Five years ago, brand-tracker data was often accepted as substantiation for "preferred" and "loved" claims. Today the screening committee is more often asking for third-party research with stated methodology — Kantar, Nielsen, GfK, or equivalent, with sample size and field period documented.

This is mostly invisible to the marketer until the rejection arrives. Your team submits the same shape of evidence that worked in 2021. It comes back asking for more.

3. Digital is in scope now

For years, agencies treated digital-only campaigns as outside the ASC's effective reach. That assumption is no longer safe. The clarification on digital and influencer content means social-first campaigns are increasingly screened, and the screening criteria apply just as strictly as for TVC.

If your team is running a TikTok-led launch and hasn't ever submitted digital creative for screening, the first attempt will likely come back with revisions. That's not a sign your creative is bad — it's a sign your team is still calibrating to the standard.

The workflow change that absorbs this

The agencies adjusting well to the new reality have made one change: they moved compliance review upstream of the production cycle. Instead of building the ad, submitting to ASC, and rebuilding on rejection, they're pre-screening at the storyboard and rough-cut stages.

The cost of catching an issue at storyboard is a copy line change. The cost of catching it at final delivery is a reshoot. The agencies winning at this aren't producing fewer creative ideas — they're catching the compliance issues 4-6 weeks earlier in the timeline.

That's where AdScan fits. Upload a rough cut, a key visual, or even a finished creative, and you get a report on what the ASC is likely to flag. Not as a replacement for the official submission — as a cheaper, faster pre-flight check before you submit.

Try it free on your next launch. First two scans are on us.