DAYS of unwholesome advertisements on the online space, seem to be coming to an end, as the Federal Government has begun wielding the big stick against violators of advertising rules on the platform.
According to the rules guiding advertising practice in the country, advertising contents, scheduled for exposure, must be certified fit by the Advertising Standards Panel (ASP), the panel with the responsibility of doing this.
Speaking at a media briefing, in Lagos, on the National Advertising Conference (NAC), scheduled for November 11 to 13, this year, in Abuja, Director General of the Advertising Regulatory Council of Nigeria (ARCON), Dr. Lekan Fadolapo, said the regulatory hammer had begun to fall on violators of advertising rules on the digital space.
Fadolapo, who was represented by the agency’s Director, Regulation, Dr. Emme Akande, stated that some of such individuals and groups had been brought before the Advertising Offences Tribunal (AOT) by the agency, in the past.
‘In fact, some known names in the content creation market had been sanctioned in the past. Why you don’t always hear about this is because many of them prefer to settle out of court, rather than face the Tribunal,’ he added.
He insisted that the pre-occupation of the agency is however not to regulate online platform, but activities relating to advertising on the space.
On the forthcoming NAC, Fadolapo stated that one of the priorities of the organisers is to ensure they raise the attendance figure from 500, recorded last year, to over 700, this year.
This, he said, the committee intended to achieve by embarking on mass publicity for the programme.
He explained that the Conference’s theme: ‘Repositioning The Marketing Communication Industry for the Next Frontier’, stemmed from the urgent need to reposition all sectors of advertising.
Chairman of the Event Planning Committee, Mr. Tunji Adeyinka, expressed the delight that the annual conference had evolved into a platform for having important industry conversations, updating industry norms, debating critical issues and networking.
He said one of the strategies adopted by the committee at ensuring the annual event does not become another ‘talkshop’, is to also make it an advocacy platform, for pushing industry agenda.
Adeyinka explained that the conference theme is aimed at tackling some of the challenges standing in the way of making critical progress in the industry.