On the Onlíner portal, the Ministry of Antimonopoly Regulation and Trade discovered advertising for Nivea cosmetics, which is prohibited from being advertised and sold in Belarus. These ads were displayed at the end of posts in the “Auto” and “Technology” sections within the visual block of the “Yandex Advertising” service. The violation was noticed after a call to the ministry’s hotline.

What happened

After a citizen’s call to the hotline, the Ministry of Antimonopoly Regulation and Trade (MART) examined the mobile version of the Onlíner site and found that at the end of articles in the “Auto” and “Technology” sections there was advertising for cosmetics, including Nivea products, which are prohibited from being advertised and sold in Belarus. The agency issued an order to eliminate the violation. The order was fully complied with by LLC “Onliner” within the specified deadline.

It is also important that the advertiser in this case is LLC “Yandex Advertising”, to whom the ministry issued a warning.

Why is this a violation?

The ban on Nivea products has been in effect for a long time. Beiersdorf cosmetics (which include Nivea,

The advertising of Nivea products was broadcast through an external advertising system.

The technical tools for managing the Yandex Advertising service do not require prior approval of each specific advertisement before it is shown.

Why is this important for Onlíner and not only for Onlíner?

The issue is that an advertiser can be removed from the Register of Advertisers if the organization has not remedied violations or if it has received two or more directives within a year.

"We believe that any Belarusian advertiser could find themselves in such a situation, so we share our experience with our readers. We also approached the Yandex Advertising service with a request to improve the existing functionality to better manage advertising broadcast settings."

What did Yandex Advertising reply to us?

The press service of Yandex Advertising also answered our questions:

"Yandex Advertising operates in accordance with the requirements of the legislation of the Republic of Belarus. In isolated cases, technical errors in the moderation of advertising systems can occur. We rechecked the campaigns — the advertising was stopped."

Yandex Advertising emphasized that in this particular case it was indeed a technical error and the human factor was excluded.