Telecommunication regulators have stepped up pressure on over-the-top (OTT) players, especially YouTube and Facebook, to come into its fold or lose a large chunk of their Thai advertising revenue.
The OTT committee of the National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission (NBTC) on Thursday met representatives of 47 advertisers on OTT platforms to explain to them its advertising policy.
The companies were told to advertise only with the providers of OTT content and platforms that have been registered with the NBTC.
“The companies we invited today are major OTT sponsors. They all have social responsibility and good corporate governance. I’m convinced they would cooperate with us to support only the providers complying with Thai laws,” said NBTC vice-chairman Natee Sakonrat.
He also described what would happen if Facebook and Youtube failed to meet the July 22 registration deadline and these companies continued to advertise on them.
“In addition to sending a letter to the US Embassy to inform them that the pair [Facebook and Youtube] are illegal platform providers which fail to abide by Thai law, we’ll notify the Stock Exchange of Thailand condemning the companies that continue to advertise on these platforms as lacking corporate governance. If they are state enterprises, we’ll inform the agencies supervising them.
“Legal action, however, will be the last resort,” he said.
In any case, Col Natee believes it wouldn't come to that as Facebook, YouTube and the advertisers all have good corporate governance.
“If the ads have already been planned, we advised them to talk to media agencies to redraft the plans since there are other channels -- their own websites, digital TV and Line TV, which has entered the OTT system,” Col Natee said.
Among the 47 brands and companies whose representatives met the NBTC on Thursday were Toyota, Honda, Thai Yamaha, Isuzu, B-Quik, Kasikornbank, Bank of Ayudhya, Siam Commercial Bank, LPN, Supalai, Thai Insurance, AIS, True, CAT Telecom, 3BB, Unilever, Colgate-Palmolive and PTT.
Most of the OTT content providers have to date registered with the NBTC, but Facebook and YouTube, the two largest platform providers have not.
Also on Thursday, the Asia Internet Coalition (AIC), an industry association of Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Apple, Twitter, Yahoo, Line and Rakuten, expressed concern about the effort to regulate the OTT services, according to Brand Inside.
"The proposed regulations do not put Thai businesses and innovators first; they instead increase their regulatory burden and potentially limit their ability to grow. The rules could also prevent millions of Thai people and enterprises from using open global platforms to build their businesses online," AIC managing director Jeff Paines said in a statement.
"We are also concerned that the rules may be at odds with Thailand’s international agreements," he added, referring to the General Agreement on Trade in Services and the Thailand’s international double tax treaties.
OTT stands for “over-the-top,” the term used for the delivery of film and TV content via the internet, without requiring users to subscribe to a traditional cable or satellite pay-TV service.
With its increasing popularity and ads revenue, digital TV operators, who paid tens of billions of baht for NBTC licences, felt threatened and urged the regulator to level the playing field.
The NBTC responded by issuing an announcement in April requiring all OTT platform and content providers to register by July 22.