The Law establishes new requirements for online advertising, it should contain:
- the mark "advertising";
- an indication of the advertiser of such advertising and (or) a site containing information about the advertiser.
In addition, the regulator duplicated the norm stipulated in paragraph 1 of Article 12 of the Law on the Activities of Foreign Persons on the Internet1 in the Law on Advertising2. This provision prohibits an advertising of foreign persons or their information resources if there is a relevant decision to prohibit the distribution of such advertising.3
This means that if such advertising is placed, the advertiser and (or) the advertising distributor may be brought to administrative responsibility under Article 14.3 of the Administrative Code and imposed with a fine. Fore example, the fine for legal entities varies from 100,000 to 500,000 rubles.
It also introduces the obligation to provide information about the placed online advertising to the state authority4 for its recording and verification. This obligation is assigned to:
- advertisers;
- advertising distributors;
- operators of advertising systems.
At the same time, the information provided about advertising on the Internet will be stored by the state authority for at least 5 years. The specific mechanism and procedure for this should be determined by the RF Government in the nearest future.
Before these amendments to the Law on Advertising, there was no special regulation regarding online advertising, excluding separate acts of the FAS. However, now, taking into account the latest amendments5, a legal framework for online advertising regulation is established.
Thus, within this Law, the new requirements for online advertising are established as well as supervision over complying with these requirements. It is supposed that after settlement of technical issues by the Government of the Russian Federation, the online advertising will come out of “grey area” and Russian consumers will be much more protected.
1Federal Law No. 236-FZ of July 1, 2021 "On the Activities of foreign Persons in the Information and Telecommunications network "Internet" on the Territory of the Russian Federation"
2Federal Law No. 38-FZ of 13.03.2006 "On Advertising"
3Presumably, such a decision on the ban will be made by Roskomnadzor
4At the moment it is assumed that the functions of this state body will be performed by Federal Service for Supervision in the Sphere of Telecom, Information Technologies and Mass Communications.
5Federal Law No. 124-FZ of 30.04.2021 "On Amendments to the Federal Law "On Advertising"