VIETNAM has tightened its advertisement regulations for foreign companies such as Google and Facebook.
The Ministry of Information and Communications said it will now take sole charge of regulating ads, instead of jointly doing so with the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism.
Under the new regulations, platforms that run ads need to provide details of their businesses including their server locations if it is located in Vietnam.
According to a Vn Express report, foreign platforms are required to prevent and remove content that violates the law as required by the communications ministry or other competent authorities.
They also need to provide information on the company or individual that ran the illegal content.
The communications ministry said such ads will be blocked if the platforms do not comply with the demand to remove them.
The new regulations are also seen as providing an edge to local newspapers and media companies.
In September 2019, 15 large businesses pulled out their advertisements from YouTube after their ads were attached to videos containing "reactionary" contents.
Vietnam had previously tightened other aspects of online ads such as limiting the maximum duration for a user to wait before skipping an ad, at 1.5 seconds.
It also prohibits the insert of ads into the middle of a news article.
However, the Vietnam Advertising Association had said that the new regulations were impractical as the 1.5 seconds was too short compared to most global platforms which waits five seconds before users are able to skip them.
The association also argued that global news portals allowed ads to appear in the middle of articles for free users, and this should also be the case in Vietnam.
They said the new regulation also creates unfair competition between Vietnamese companies and global advertising giants like Facebook and Google, which account for over 80 per cent of total ad revenues in Vietnam.
It said the pandemic had created high demand for companies to advertise their products and services online.
According to them, the Advertising Law was enacted nearly 10 years ago and has not caught up with recent technology and media developments.
Instead, the latest regulations created even more hindrances to the sector's development, the association said.
Revenues from online advertisements in Vietnam is set to hit US$400 million next year, up 345 per cent from 2019, according to advertising agency Adsota.
It is estimated that only 45 per cent of Google's advertising revenues and 30 per cent of Facebook's go through the ministry now.