The expert explained the new criteria for determining advertising

Boris Omelnitsky, President of the Association for the Development of Interactive Advertising, explained why, in accordance with the new rules, promotion on marketplaces, classifieds and search engines does not apply to online advertising.

Earlier on June 20, Deputy Head of the Federal Antimonopoly Service Adilya Vyaseleva spoke at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) about the draft decree of the Government of the Russian Federation developed by the Service, which clarified the criteria for classifying information on marketplaces and aggregator sites, in Internet search engines and social networks to online advertising.

Thus, according to the text of the document, advertising does not include materials of a reference, informational or analytical nature, designed in particular in the form of a catalog of goods, works or services and containing the same type of brief information about persons or products. In a conversation with Izvestia, Omelnitsky noted that, thus, search promotion within marketplaces is not advertising. According to the expert, in practice, sites such as marketplaces and classifieds did not label such content as advertising anyway. Now, this approach is enshrined in law, which creates uniformity in regulation.

"Whether or not to classify promotion in search engines, classifieds, and marketplaces as advertising has always been a controversial issue. For example, neither marketplaces nor classifieds have ever labeled such content. It does not fulfill the classic advertising function of generating demand. On the contrary, it performs rather an informational function — it helps users find the right goods without artificially generating demand," the expert explained.

According to him, the need for a clear separation of the concepts of "promotion" and "advertising" has become especially acute after the introduction of advertising labeling on the Internet. Thus, the new resolution has become part of a consistent effort to adapt the law "On Advertising" to the modern realities of the digital market.