Douyin, TikTok’s Chinese version, tightens vetting of advertisers as Beijing takes aim at booming short web drama market
- Douyin will soon require advertisers to show proper licensing documents before promoting short-form dramas on the video platform
- The rules effectively ban individuals and many smaller studios from advertising on ByteDance’s popular Chinese short-video app
ByteDance’s Douyin, the Chinese sibling of TikTok that has over 600 million daily active users, has tightened its screening of advertisers in response to Beijing’s increased control of short video content.
Under Douyin’s new requirement, which will come into effect on Thursday, advertisers looking to promote short-form dramas – budget productions with each episode lasting only a few minutes – will need to show proper licensing documents, according to a notice published by the company’s advertising arm on Monday.
The required documents include the “radio and television programme production and operations licence”, “value-added telecoms business operations licence”, and either the “information network communications audiovisual licence” or the “internet culture operations licence”. All licence holders have been pre-screened by government content-control authorities.
The rules, which Douyin said are intended to ensure that the industry is “developing on the right track”, effectively ban individuals and unlicensed studios from promoting content on the platform.
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“Not many institutions hold those three licences at the same time, but for institutions that do, this will be a big opportunity for them,” said Zhang Yi, CEO of Chinese market consultancy iiMedia.
