Antimonopoly service will not regulate contextual advertising

According to the official website of the Federal Antimonopoly Service of Russia, in the near future no actions aimed at regulating targeted advertising on the Internet are planned - contrary to the words of the head of Roskomnadzor, Alexander Zharov, about the need to introduce “contextual censorship”.

According to the deputy head of the FAS, Andrei Kashevarov, the issue of legal regulation of a particular sphere arises only in the case of mass complaints from users, but he will not recall any such complaints lately. “Currently, Russian legislation does not have the tools to regulate contextual advertising. And as long as this type of advertising services complies with the principles of the law “On Advertising”, there are no prerequisites for talking about any violations, ”said Mr. Kashevarov. “Moreover, the mechanism of action of contextual advertising, in which the user begins to receive advertising proposals based on search results, has little in common with the law in force.”

At the same time, the deputy head of FAS admitted the possibility of introducing regulation in the future: “Given the intrusiveness of this service, there is a possibility of introducing certain legal regulations for targeted advertising in the future. However, this is unlikely to happen in the near future, given the lack of a unified approach to the perception of this service in different countries of the world. ”
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Recall that earlier the head of Roskomnadzor, Alexander Zharov, raised the issue of introducing the established laws of the law on contextual advertising. According to him, retargeting is an “intrusive” service that often worries users without their explicit consent. However, as stated by representatives of one of the companies providing services on the Internet advertising market, no official proposal has yet been received from Roskomnadzor regarding the discussion of the contextual advertising issue.

It is curious that, according to the data of the Association of Communication Agencies of Russia, the Internet is the only category of the advertising market that shows stable growth, and this is precisely due to the services of contextual advertising. In particular, according to the organization, for an incomplete 2015, advertisers spent more than 50 billion rubles on targeted ads.