The National Media Council stressed the need for advertisers, whether institutions or advertising accounts, on social media sites, the conditions set when advertising and promoting candidates for the elections of the National Council, stressing the need to distinguish the advertising material for candidates from the editorial material, and to be referred to as paid advertising material.

The UAE Today has recently announced the spread of advertisements and videos promoting the candidates of the National Council elections on the accounts of news organizations and social networking sites, without mentioning that it is a paid advertising material, causing confusion among the followers, and was thought to be editorial material.

The National Media Council confirmed that «in the case of advertisements that include, directly or indirectly, promotion or advertising, or endorsement of the person or the advertiser of a particular product or service, the advertiser must clearly disclose whether there is any material return, within a business relationship With the person or owner of the advertised product or service. ”

With regard to electronic advertisements in social media, the Council stressed that all practicing advertising activities, on a commercial basis and for a fee or non-material, through social media, to obtain a prior authorization from the Council.

The Council stated that, according to its earlier advertising guide on the standards governing advertising in the media, advertisements must be clearly identified, noting that a set of conditions must be met in these advertisements, including: clearly identifying advertising on social media; The appearance of the advertisement is distinct and independent from editorial, media and any other material, and the setting of limits separating the advertisement from any other material and time intervals in the case of broadcasting, for example, writing on the article «advertising material» or «declaration» and other important phrases, and disclosure Clear in case there is any material allowance My eyes have been paid by the advertiser for publications or articles published on social media, websites or blogs, and the use of clear language does not leave any confusion about the identity of the ad and being paid, through: A clearly “paid advertisement”, not accompanied by many hashtags so hard to see.

The Council added that the use of the words "thanks to ... the advertiser", or "in cooperation with ...", is not enough to disclose that the declaration is paid or not, pointing to the need to use a clear and readable font, and avoid the very small unread font, Disclosure should be placed in a clear place for readers.In general, the disclosure should be placed at the beginning of the content or description, and avoid placing the disclosure in a place where users are required to navigate to another page or other content (e.g. Disclosure under the link «Read more», or similar).

If the content is a video, the disclosure must be given orally through the video (in addition to its written form), and if advertising is made using stories or videos placed on the account, the disclosure must be placed in the first or second image or video, Live broadcasting, this applies to all social media accounts.

Ad controls

• Respect the cultural and civilizational heritage of the state.

• Not to offend national unity and social cohesion, and not to incite sectarian, sectarian and tribal tensions.

• Respecting the orientations and policies adopted by the State internally and at the level of its relations with other States.

• Do not harm the economic system in the state, and do not publish rumors and news tendentious and misleading.

• Respect the state's tendencies to enhance its national identity.

• Do not post false, misleading, misleading ads.