New Online Ad Rules in Iran Require Identity Checks and Licensed Agencies

Iran’s National Cyberspace Center has issued an online advertising framework that directs the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance to verify advertising operators and intermediaries and ensure licensed advertising agencies are part of the publishing chain.

The rules cover advertising on both domestic and foreign platforms. They also require legal steps toward a levy on advertising transactions and tax incentives for ads on domestic platforms. The levy’s rate is not specified, and the framework does not establish that collection has begun.

The eight-article framework was sent to responsible agencies for implementation under a notice dated September 26, 2026, following approval by the High Commission for the Promotion of Cyberspace Content Production. Its requirements extend beyond licensing to platform liability, ad disclosures, consumer rights, age classification and the processing of personal data.

Licensed agencies and an advertising registry

The Culture Ministry must work with sector regulators to ensure a licensed advertising agency participates in the publication of each ad. The framework defines such agencies as entities holding an advertising license under the ministry’s rules.

An exception allows advertisers to promote their own products or services directly on their own dedicated platform or publishing outlet, subject to applicable regulations. Platforms or outlets that participate directly and substantively in preparing or publishing ads can themselves be classified as advertising intermediaries.

The definition of online advertising includes promotional listings for goods and services on shopping platforms. Publishing outlets can include publicly accessible websites, channels, pages, apps and bots. Advertising operators are individuals or entities that receive ads from an advertiser and publish them directly to end users; intermediaries provide services along the advertising chain, including production, marketing, buying, selling and distribution.

The ministry has one year from issuance to identify and verify advertising operators and intermediaries, facilitate licensed agencies’ activity to help develop advertising marketplaces, and prevent unauthorized advertising. It must prepare and approve identity-verification guidelines for individual operators within three months.

A registry for checking the authorization status of operators and intermediaries must also be established within one year. Advertisers and licensed agencies are required to check a publisher’s status before placing an ad order; the framework prohibits orders to people or entities outside that system.

Separately, regulators must require operators and intermediaries to accept ads only from authorized advertisers. Within six months, the Culture Ministry and the Ministry of Industry, Mine and Trade must issue guidelines for documented advertising identifiers, making clear to audiences that a message is an ad and identifying its advertiser, operator and intermediary.

A two-year target for half the market

The framework sets three operational goals over two years: routing at least 50% of the online advertising market’s total value through authorized, supervised marketplaces; reducing the volume of criminal content and unauthorized activity by at least 20% annually; and identifying, verifying and issuing activity identifiers to at least 90% of active advertising operators and intermediaries with more than 10,000 followers on publishing outlets.

These are targets, rather than reported results. The ministry’s broader identification duty is not limited to operators above the follower threshold.

Oversight will prioritize services with the greatest reach, including large audiovisual platforms, widely used social networks, large user-driven platforms and advertising operators with substantial followings. For platforms beyond effective regulatory control, the framework directs regulators to focus on advertisers and publishers.

Its policy agenda also calls for a transparent, competitive market, access to market data, a shift toward data-driven advertising, participation by industry associations in oversight, promotion of domestic goods and restrictions on advertising foreign goods. Ads distributed through print, broadcast, outdoor or SMS channels as well as online remain subject to those channels’ rules too. Classification of platforms as domestic or foreign follows Iran’s existing policy framework for social messaging services.

Transaction levy and incentives for domestic platforms

The Culture Ministry and the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Finance must take the necessary legal steps within three months toward collecting a levy on online advertising activity. The intended mechanism would deduct a percentage of the fee or revenue from each advertising transaction, including transactions involving intermediaries, platforms and marketplaces.

After passing through the Treasury, proceeds would go to an advertising financial-support and investment fund or a dedicated revenue line for implementing the framework. The document leaves the percentage unspecified.

The Culture Ministry must also take legal steps within one year to establish financial-support mechanisms, including that fund, with economic and scientific agencies and industry participants. Funding would draw on member contributions, investment and lawful revenue. Existing funds and investment companies can be used in the meantime.

Within six months, the Culture Ministry and the tax authority must make operators’ and intermediaries’ activity on foreign platforms more transparent. The tax authority must also take legal steps, based on the ministry’s assessment, toward exemptions or a reduced tax coefficient for ads on domestic platforms. The framework does not specify the size of those incentives.

The Industry Ministry must develop and implement advertising support, particularly a package supporting advertising-services exports, within six months, working with the Culture Ministry and the state broadcaster. Advertisers are to be directed toward authorized intermediaries, especially advertising marketplaces and domestic platforms and outlets.

Platform liability and online monitoring

Platforms and publishing outlets are not responsible for the regulatory compliance of ads received from a licensed agency unless the ads contain obviously criminal content. The document defines that exception as content whose criminal nature can be recognized on sight, without a complainant’s allegation or the opinion of a specialist authority or judicial officer.

For ads prepared or published by users or publishing outlets without a user-driven platform’s direct involvement, responsibility rests with the publisher. The platform is exempt if it complies with relevant rules for addressing crimes and unauthorized activity.

Within one year, the Culture Ministry must establish a system for intelligent, comprehensive online monitoring with public participation. The participating bodies include the Industry and ICT ministries, the state broadcaster, the Prosecutor General’s Office, the Basij organization and the police, alongside authorized platforms and intermediaries. The system is intended to allow ads to be monitored as soon as possible after publication, using trade associations and civil-society organizations to help identify unauthorized advertising. Sector regulators must require platforms acting as advertising intermediaries to cooperate.

The ministry is also instructed to engage foreign platform owners, working with the Foreign Affairs, Industry and ICT ministries and the state broadcaster, to maximize compliance with advertising rules.

It must prepare a bill on the development and regulation of commercial online advertising within one year, including enforcement mechanisms, and submit it through the judiciary to the cabinet for the legal approval process. That legislative task is separate from the framework already issued.

Personal data, consumer protection and age ratings

The Culture Ministry has one year to issue a mechanism for overseeing personal-data processing for targeted advertising. This includes displaying ads based on a person’s data and predicting their preferences and interests.

The Industry Ministry, working with the Culture Ministry, must issue consumer-rights guidelines within the same period. Violations are to be addressed under Iran’s consumer-protection and electronic-commerce laws.

A national market-data and consumer-behavior analysis system must be launched within one year. Data processing in that system must be aggregated, statistical and non-identifying, but its specialist reports and analytical dashboards will be available exclusively to licensed advertising agencies. The Culture Ministry must provide annual estimates of the online advertising market’s size to the National Cyberspace Center.

The presidential office responsible for science, technology and the knowledge-based economy is instructed to support advertising-enabling technology companies. Priority areas include AI and big-data tools for market analysis, audience behavior, content optimization and personalized advertising, subject to privacy requirements and the framework’s personal-data oversight provisions.

Within one year, sector regulators must enable the technical separation of content by users’ age groups. The Culture Ministry and partner bodies, including the Islamic Development Organization, the Education Ministry and the state broadcaster, must issue appropriate age-classification guidelines for products and advertising content.

Public spending, competition and implementation

The Culture Ministry must use public agencies’ advertising and communications budgets and designated development-plan resources to arrange for at least 10% of platforms’ and outlets’ advertising space to promote goods and messages that advance Islamic-Iranian values.

Within one year, it must publish a ranking system for licensed advertising agencies, based on those values, advertising-law compliance and other relevant criteria. Public agencies covered by the framework must place their online advertising only through agencies awarded a top ranking. Their financial controllers must oversee compliance, and the ministry must publish annual implementation reports.

The ministry, the Industry Ministry and the National Cyberspace Center must monitor market disruption, monopolies and other anticompetitive conduct. Cases will first be considered by the national central committee for advertising organizations and, where necessary, referred to the Competition Council and National Competition Center.

The Culture Ministry must take steps within three months to establish trade associations for authorized operators and intermediaries. It must also provide continuing education on advertising responsibilities and rules, and work with the judiciary and police within six months to establish arrangements for operators and intermediaries to complete cybercrime-prevention training.

The ministry is the national coordinator responsible for implementation. Oversight through the central advertising committee draws on ministries and other institutions, including the Intelligence Ministry, the police and the intelligence organization of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. An implementation plan and budget estimate are due within three months, and a revised version of the framework is to be prepared within two years to reflect changes in technology and the market.

Evaluation measures include registered and authorized participants, the ratio of verified to informal operators, authorized and unauthorized advertising revenue, domestic platforms’ share, regulations issued or revised, public and industry participation, financial support and authorized and unauthorized medical advertising. The Culture Ministry must report annually on progress against the framework’s goals.

The duties assigned to public bodies are binding from issuance, with each body’s highest executive official responsible. Failure to carry out those duties can be pursued by the Prosecutor General’s Office at the National Cyberspace Center’s request under applicable laws. All bodies with assigned duties must submit reports every six months, including evidence and an explanation of whether targets were met.

Document: Full online advertising framework and issuance notice, in Persian.