In June 2025, the National Assembly adopted several amendments to existing 2012 Law on Advertising (Advertising Law Amendments 2025). The amended law will take effect from 1 January 2026. In this post, we discuss some of the material changes introduced by Advertising Law Amendments 2025. To offer a comprehensive perspective, we also include a summary generated by Google's Gemini AI for comparison and reference (see here).

New Carve-out To The Prohibition On Comparative Advertising

The Advertising Law Amendment 2025 allows comparative advertising between one’s own products/goods/services and those of other entities of the same kind when there is “legitimate supporting documentation”. Before this, all comparative advertising was prohibited. The new carved out opens the door for lawful and transparent comparative advertising.

Stricter requirements for advertising content

The Advertising Law Amendments 2025 enhances consumer protection by requiring advertising content to be truthful, accurate, and clear, avoiding any misleading about the features, quality, functions, or effects of the advertised goods or services. Disclaimers or warnings must be prominently displayed and clearly communicated, matching the visibility and audibility of the main content.

The Advertising Law 2025 also clarifies that certain information is not considered advertising, such as: mandatory labeling content under labeling laws (except for functional foods and special dietary products); promotional materials and trade fair displays (except the same food categories mentioned above); etc,. in order to distinguish between commercial advertising and informational or regulatory communication.

Expanded Allowances for Advertising Time and Space

The Advertising Law Amendment 2025 doubles the maximum allowable advertising space in printed newspapers and magazines from 15% to 30% for newspapers and 20% to 40% for magazines. The Advertising Law Amendment 2025 also includes advertising supplements in the exceptions to these space limits.
The Advertising Law Amendment 2025 also allows a film or entertainment program which has content of more than 15 minutes to have one additional interruption for advertising for an additional 15 minutes of content. The current law caps the number of interruptions for advertising to two for films and four for entertainment programs. Under the new law, a 60-minute film can now have four advertising interruptions, double the previous limit of two. This is because the rule allows for one interruption for every 15 minutes of content.
The calculation basis for maximum advertising duration is also changed. While the Advertising Law 2012 calculates this duration based on the total daily broadcast time of each broadcasting organization, the Advertising Law 2025 shifts the basis to the total daily broadcast time of each channel, or program.

Gatekeeper Responsibilities For Endorsers

The Advertising Law Amendment 2025 expressly captures the activities of key opinion leaders (KOLs) or key opinion consumers (KOCs) who frequently publish advertising content. These activities are previously not explicitly captured by the Advertising Law 2012. Endorsers are now subject to certain “gatekeeper” responsibilities when providing endorsement to a product or service as follows:

Comply with advertisement law, consumer protection law when providing information on goods and products;
Verify the reliability of the advertiser. The amendments do not specify the required standard of diligence for these verification duties, leaving it unclear how much research an endorser must conduct to avoid liability;
Examine documents related to the advertised products/goods/services;
Avoid promoting products/goods/services they have not used or understood; and
Provide disclosure notices before and during advertising activities.

Stricter regulations for online advertising

The Advertising Law Amendment 2025 broadens its regulatory scope to include advertising on social networks, online apps, and digital platforms, in addition to websites and e-newspapers. In particular,

Online advertising activities must include clear identification to distinguish advertising content from non-advertising content.
For non-fixed-position advertisements, there must be a visible feature or icon that enables recipients to turn off the advertisement, report violations, or opt out of inappropriate advertising content.
For advertisements containing links to other content, the linked content must comply with the law, and must also be monitored by advertising service providers and advertisers.
An endorser or advertiser must not associate advertisements with illegal content and platforms. The scope of what constitutes an 'illegal platform' is not defined, creating a potential compliance risk for advertisers using large, user-generated content networks where illicit content may appear without the platform's endorsement;
Advertising service providers must verify advertiser identities, retain data and algorithms, ensure transparency, and report to authorities when required; and
Social network service providers must offer tools to clearly distinguish advertising content from other content.

This post is written by Pham Thi Thu Trang and edited by Nguyen Quang Vu.

Vietnam Business Law