Vietnam’s Ministry of Information and Communication has warned two foreign content firms against showing advertisements on restricted content in Vietnam, Tuoi Tre has reported. The Ministry has recommended the two companies–Singapore’s RTB and France’s Daily Motion user-generated video platform–refer to the Ministry’s list of approved websites for advertising.
The MIC maintains a blacklist and a whitelist of places where advertisements can and cannot be shown which is supposed to make it easier for advertisers to avoid breaking the rules. In reality, however, both lists are very short and severely limiting, making it difficult on a practical level for advertising firms to comply.
Of note, international advertising agency Group M was fined US$1,442, back in November, for ads for Procter & Gamble and Unilever that it ran on YouTube videos that the MIC didn’t approve of. Fines, however, seem difficult to enforce on companies outside of Vietnam and this may be why RTB and Daily Motion have only received warnings rather than fines.