Sunday 20 October 2013

APCON set to tighten online advertising regulations

The Advertisers Practitioners Council of
Nigeria, APCON is set to tighten regulations on
all forms of advertising carried out through the
internet medium. The Chairman of APCON, Lolu Akinwumi stated
this while speaking to Vanguard on the sideline
of an event to present corporate licences and
certificates to some organisations under the
new APCON regime in Lagos recently. He said that owing to unique challenges that
online advertising pose for regulation, the
regulation agency would partner with Google
and other online classified ad operators in the
country to strengthen regulation and protect
consumers. According to him, ‘Regulating all advertising
contents has always been and will continue to
be APCON’s core duty. We have the Advertising
Standard Panel, ASP, which under the law, has
the power and the responsibility to vet all
advertising materials in all media including the internet for the Nigerian market.’ He however added that, ‘There are obvious
challenges because the monitoring of the
internet is something that poses its own
problems but having said that, the council of
APCON is working with Google and the other
online advert operators to ensure that there is enough control on the content that goes out of
the websites of all the big organizations.’ When contacted on how they are regulating
advertising through the internet medium, two
of the leading online classifieds operators in
Nigeria, OLX and Karewa, said they already have
mechanisms in place that ensures that
fraudulent contents are warded off and consumers protected. “We have people who read every ad submitted
before it is posted and there are certain things
that they look out for to ensure that it is not a
scam. We generally take zero tolerance
approach to that kind of entry and we do not let
it go. We also report to local authorities like the police if we pick up such things. We know we
cannot guarantee 100 per cent safety but we
do all the things we can to protect our users,”
said Ms Browyn Johnson, Head of Marketing,
OLX Africa. For Nino Njopkou who is the Chief Executive
Officer of Karewa.com, although regulating
online advertising contents poses huge
challenge for operators, the company has put
in place several mechanisms to protect its
users. He said, “On the Internet, fraud is a big issue
that all User Generated Content, UGC websites
confront.

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