Vietnam’s advertising law in 2026: the rules that change a foreign brand’s launch plan

Vietnam rewrote its advertising rules in four texts over twelve months. An amended Advertising Law took effect on 1 January 2026, a new implementing decree on 15 February, a new decree on fines on 15 May, and a circular defining what counts as proof for words like “best” on 5 July.

Most of the coverage abroad stopped at one rule: online video ads must let the viewer close them within five seconds. That rule is real, but it mainly binds platforms and publishers. The rules that change a foreign brand’s launch plan are about who places the ads, what language they are written in, which claims can be made, how creators are hired, and which products need approval before any of it runs.

This article sets out those rules as they stand in October 2026, what each one does to the plan, and a worked example of one launch brief checked line by line. It is a planning summary, written to help a marketing team ask the right questions early. It is not legal advice, and each product and structure should be confirmed with counsel in Vietnam.

Four texts in one year

Two older texts still matter. The Consumer Protection Law of 2023, in force since 1 July 2024, makes a business disclose its sponsorship of influencers. And for cosmetics, Circular 03/2026/TT-BYT removed the advance approval of ad content from 15 February 2026; how that plays into a beauty launch is covered in the Vietnam cosmetics market.

The fine levels quoted below are the individual rates in Decree 87/2026/ND-CP. The decree states that an organisation pays twice the individual rate for the same violation, so a brand should double every figure.

Who places the ads: the rule for companies not yet in Vietnam

Article 39 of the Advertising Law draws a line that many entry plans miss. A foreign organisation operating in Vietnam may advertise its own products directly. A foreign organisation not operating in Vietnam that wants to advertise there “must hire a Vietnamese advertising service provider” to do it. The fine for not doing so is VND 30 to 50 million, so VND 60 to 100 million for a company.

Two other rules make the question visible. Decree 342/2025/ND-CP requires intermediary ad platforms to show, for each ad, the name and address of the advertiser or of whoever was authorised to buy the ad. And search ads must be marked as sponsored. The name of the buyer is therefore on the ad, not only in a contract.

What we could not find is an authoritative answer on whether a foreign company buying through a global platform’s self-serve account, billed abroad, satisfies Article 39. No regulator guidance or law-firm analysis we read settles it. That makes it a decision to take with counsel before the first campaign, not after, because the answer changes three things in the plan:

• Who is the advertiser of record: the brand, a Vietnamese agency, or the distributor.
• Who owns the accounts and the data, which matters when the agency or distributor changes. This is one of the decisions covered in what to settle before your first campaign in Vietnam.
• Where the media budget sits in the contracts, including whether the agency passes platform invoices through or bills its own.

Vietnamese first, and foreign text below it

Article 18 requires every ad to carry its content in Vietnamese. The exceptions are narrow: trademarks, slogans, brand names, proper names, and internationalised words that cannot be replaced by Vietnamese. Since 2026 the law adds that the Vietnamese must be clear, easy to understand and accurate.

Where both languages appear in one ad, foreign text may be at most three quarters the size of the Vietnamese and must sit below it. In radio, television and other audio-visual formats, the Vietnamese is read first. The fine is VND 5 to 10 million per ad, before doubling.

For a foreign brand, this is a production line, not a translation line. A global key visual with an English headline and a Vietnamese line underneath has the hierarchy upside down. A video with an English voice-over and Vietnamese subtitles does not read the Vietnamese first. Both need new cuts. Budget for local production of every asset that makes a product claim, and keep English for what the exception covers: the brand name, the product name and the slogan.

“Best”, “No. 1”, “only”: the claim now needs a document

The Advertising Law has long banned words such as “nhất” (most), “duy nhất” (only), “tốt nhất” (best) and “số một” (number one) without legal proof. Until July 2026 it was unclear what proof meant. Circular 12/2026/TT-BVHTTDL now defines it.

The rule covers words or phrases “in Vietnamese or a foreign language” that assert a leading position, uniqueness or absoluteness. “Korea’s No. 1 serum” and “the world’s best-selling” are covered as much as their Vietnamese equivalents. Two kinds of document qualify:

• A market survey by an organisation lawfully established and operating with a market research function.
• A certificate issued at a national, regional or international contest, exhibition or award that ranks or recognises the product as the best, the only or the first.

The ad must then state the document’s name, number or reference, and the date the survey was published or the certificate issued. It can only be used for as long as the document is valid, and only if it is independent, objective and does not mislead. The fine for a superlative without proof is VND 10 to 20 million. Comparing a product with a named competitor’s without legal proof is a separate violation, at VND 40 to 60 million.

Two consequences for planning. First, a claim imported from the home market needs a document that meets this test, which a home-market sales ranking may not. Second, the citation takes space on the ad, so the decision has to come before the layout, not after the creative is approved.

Creators: the brand stays in the chain

The 2026 amendment created a category of “people who carry advertising products”, with extra duties for influencers: verify the advertiser and check the product’s documents, do not promote a product they have not used or do not understand, and announce that the content is advertising immediately before and during it. How to brief and pay creators within those duties is covered in influencer marketing in Vietnam. What changed in 2026 is the price of getting it wrong, and where that price lands.

The brand is not outside this table. The Advertising Law makes an advertiser jointly liable for ads it hires others to carry. When an influencer fails to verify the advertiser or check the documents, or promotes a product without having used or understood it, Decree 87/2026/ND-CP lets the authorities order the company that holds the advertising contract to recall the goods and hand over the money from their sale, which can cost far more than the fine. And the Consumer Protection Law separately requires the business itself to disclose that it sponsors an influencer. In June 2026 Viet Nam News reported that the National Competition Commission had fined Xiaomi Vietnam VND 290 million for three violations of that law, one of them failing to disclose influencer sponsorship; the distributor of the Vietnamese brand Cocoon had been fined VND 50 million for the same failure in January.

For the plan, this moves three items earlier: product samples reach creators early enough for them to actually use the product before filming, the documents pack each creator must check is prepared before booking, and the disclosure wording is written into every creator contract.

The five-second rule, and what it asks of brands

The rule behind “Vietnam’s skip ads law” is Article 17 of Decree 342/2025/ND-CP. It applies to ads that appear online outside a fixed position and cover all or part of the main content, interrupting the user. Such ads must close with a single interaction, with no fake or hard-to-find close button. A static image ad must be closable immediately. A video or animated ad may make the user wait at most five seconds before it can be closed. Users must also be able to report an ad and refuse ads they find unsuitable.

These are duties for whoever designs the format, which in practice is the platform or publisher. Decree 87/2026/ND-CP fines an online ad without a clear label, or an intrusive ad without the required close control, at VND 30 to 40 million. A brand’s legal exposure to the closing rule is mostly indirect, but its creative is not. Any video bought in an interruptive format should carry the brand and the offer in its first five seconds, because many viewers will not see the sixth.

Two other online rules do bind the brand. Ads must be clearly identifiable as ads, and social media users who advertise must mark sponsored content. And no one in the chain, including the advertiser, may place ads in, beside, immediately before or after unlawful content, or work with sites and accounts the authorities have publicly listed as violating the law. That fine is VND 40 to 50 million. In practice it belongs in the media brief: placement exclusions, and the agency’s duty to check them.

Categories that need approval, and categories that cannot be advertised

Some products cannot be advertised in Vietnam at all. The Advertising Law lists, among others, tobacco, alcohol of 15 degrees or more, breast-milk substitutes for children under 24 months, prescription drugs, and goods with sexually stimulating properties.

Decree 342/2025/ND-CP then names special products whose ads carry mandatory content: cosmetics, food, children’s milk, chemicals and insecticides, medical devices, medical services, agricultural inputs, fertiliser, seeds, drugs, and alcohol below 15 degrees. Cosmetics ads, for instance, must state the product name, its function and the organisation that notified it, and may not use the image, uniform or name of doctors, pharmacists, other health workers or medical facilities.

A subset still needs its ad content confirmed by an authority before anything runs. Health supplements are the case foreign brands meet most often: confirmation is still required, and from 1 July 2026 it is issued by the chair of the provincial People’s Committee rather than at ministry level. Drugs also need confirmation. Advertising a special product without required confirmation is fined VND 30 to 40 million, before doubling. For drugs, food and medical services, repeating the same violation within six months can also suspend the product registration or licence for one to three months.

For a launch plan, confirmation is a dependency on the calendar. A product line that needs it gets its own launch date, set by the approval rather than by the media plan.

A worked example: one launch brief, checked line by line

The brand and brief below are illustrative. A skincare brand with no Vietnamese entity plans its launch from a regional office in Singapore. Its first brief to agencies includes six lines:

None of the six lines is unusual. Each is common practice in the brand’s home market, and each would have reached Vietnam unchanged if nobody had checked. Settling them before the agency pitches costs a few weeks of preparation. Settling them after launch costs reshoots, contract changes and, in the worst case, a recall order on the products the creators sold.

Where the rules in this article come from

The texts were read in Vietnamese, in full, on 7 October 2026:

• Advertising Law No. 16/2012/QH13 as consolidated after Law 75/2025/QH15 (passed 16 June 2025, in force 1 January 2026): Articles 7, 8, 12, 15a, 18, 23 and 39. The Law 75 text was checked against the copy on the Hanoi city portal.
• Decree 342/2025/ND-CP, signed 26 December 2025, in force 15 February 2026: Articles 3, 4, 5, 17, 19 and 32, checked against the signed copy on the Hà Tĩnh provincial portal.
• Decree 87/2026/ND-CP, signed 27 March 2026, in force 15 May 2026: Articles 2, 6, 50, 51, 52, 55, 56 and 68.
• Circular 12/2026/TT-BVHTTDL, signed 22 May 2026, in force 5 July 2026: Article 3.
• Consumer Protection Law No. 19/2023/QH15, in force 1 July 2024: Articles 10 and 22.
• Health supplement confirmation from 1 July 2026: the Hà Tĩnh provincial portal, May 2026, on the transfer of authority under Decree 15/2018/ND-CP.
• Enforcement: Viet Nam News, 3 June 2026, on Decision 123/QD-XPHC of the National Competition Commission (Xiaomi Vietnam) and the earlier fine on the distributor of Cocoon; Tuổi Trẻ reported the same decision on the same day.

Fine levels are the individual rates in Decree 87/2026/ND-CP; organisations pay twice those amounts.

Where this work stops

MWY does not give legal advice, draft contracts, file product notifications or apply for ad content approval. Those belong with counsel and regulatory specialists in Vietnam. MWY also does not run advertising or take commission from any agency, platform or creator.

What we do in Go-to-Market Strategy is put these rules into the entry plan before money is committed: which structure places the ads, which claims the launch can make and what each one needs, a creator brief and contract checklist built around the 2026 duties, and a launch calendar that carries every approval as a dependency. The questions that need a lawyer are listed and handed to one, so they are answered before the agency pitch rather than after the first campaign.