MIC officials in early November had a working session with VAA with hundreds of members in the advertisement industry.

A VAA representative said the association is moving ahead with the plan to form uan alliance, or an inter-branch in digital advertisement. VAA is also planning to upgrade its annual exhibition into a festival with sideline activities, especially ones related to online advertisement.

VAA pointed out problems in digital advertisements, which need to be solved immediately. While digital ads have been growing very rapidly in Vietnam, false ads and law infringement have caused frustration in society.

VAA’s chair Nguyen Truong Son said the association owns a professional software system capable of detecting and counting false ads and is ready to share information with MIC to ‘clean’ Vietnam’s cyberspace. VAA can also work with MIC to develop Whitelist, or the list of authenticated contents\.

Son also mentioned another problem that Vietnamese now have to pay for ads to Google, Facebook and TikTok. Most of the large platforms belong to foreign firms. Vietnamese ad firms are just agencies, though some of them can obtain revenue of trillions of dong.

Meanwhile, MIC Deputy Minister Nguyen Thanh Lam showed problems in the information and communications sector and called for cooperation from VAA

Most of the products in the Vietnamese advertising market are digital ads. However, good ads now also appear in places full of toxic content, not to mention advertisements for products and service breaching the law on the internet.

In such conditions, MIC wants to re-direct online advertisements, which aims to increase the total ad output of the Vietnamese press and help press agencies get better prices for online ads. 

According to Lam, most Vietnam’s ad firms are doing business on foreign platforms. He warned that the way of doing business will lead to heavy reliance and pose risks for domestic companies.

Cross-border ad firms hold the advantage because they have platforms with many users. However, the problem is that current laws cannot protect domestic firms against pressure by foreign platforms. 

MIC called on VAA to build a code of conduct for advertisers, with clear requirements on law observation and social responsibility. This will serve as a tool that helps MIC deal with violations of laws in cyberspace.

Van Anh