Lawyers Analyzed 10 Schemes to Circumvent the Advertising Ban Effective September 1

Deleting a post after 24 hours

An unmarked publication is left in the account for a few hours or a day, then deleted. The scheme relies on no one managing to record the violation.

Legally, the lifespan of the publication changes nothing: the violation arises the moment the material becomes available to the audience. After deletion, the fact of placement is confirmed by screenshots and saved copies. This is exactly the situation examined in case No. 066/05/18.1-3381/2025 of the Sverdlovsk FAS regional office — the disputed publications had been deleted by the time of the review, but the complainant had saved copies in Telegram. The statute of limitations for advertising law violations is one year under Article 4.5 of the KoAP RF.

A blogger's personal review

A blogger says they tried a product and liked it. Without a promo code, link, or direct offer to buy, such content may be personal opinion, but merely avoiding advertising wording is not enough.

The FAS examined this boundary in detail in its clarifications of November 21, 2022. An organic mention is one naturally embedded in the author's usual content. The qualification changes when the entire material focuses on a specific product: a detailed description of features, excessive emphasis on advantages, a positively framed assessment. A similar approach is set out in the FAS letter of May 25, 2011, No. AK/20129.

Recent practice: in the decision of the Primorye FAS regional office of December 24, 2025, No. 025/05/18.1-1063/2025, the owner of a Telegram channel referred to personal experience. For five posts, the commission found a violation.

Blogger content on a brand's social media

A blogger creates material for a company but publishes it only on the company's resources. The FAS allows that a company's information about its own products may have a reference-informational character — the criteria are described in the FAS guidelines approved by order of November 14, 2023, No. 821/23. Under this model, facebase lawyers use author's commission contracts. But if particular attention is paid to a specific product and the material is clearly aimed at promotion, it may be deemed advertising.

A foreign legal entity

For online advertising, what matters is which consumers it targets. If the material is aimed at a Russian audience, the product is sold in Russia, and the price is listed in rubles, a participant's foreign registration does not solve the problem. Regulators still have an accessible Russian participant in the chain — for example, the advertiser.

Marking through an agency

Outsourcing the technical work with erid and ORD to an agency is possible. If the agency makes a mistake and the brand receives a fine, the contract becomes the basis for resolution: Article 15 of the Civil Code allows claiming damages, and Article 406.1 of the Civil Code allows determining in advance the procedure for compensating property losses. The lawyers advise fixing a specific scope of the contractor's liability in the contract.

Stories and live streams

The short lifespan of stories does not exempt advertising from marking. Live streams are more complicated: Roskomnadzor drafted an order allowing an erid to be obtained after the broadcast within 30 days. But the rule has not entered into force. Roskomnadzor's order of March 25, 2025, No. 68 remains in effect: the identifier is assigned before the advertising is distributed.

Unboxing and review

If there truly are no relations with the brand behind a publication, there may be no grounds to consider it advertising. But if the video is entirely devoted to promoting one product, it may receive an advertising qualification even under the title of a review. If a commissioned video is published on a blogger's account and promotes a product to their subscribers, an author's commission contract alone does not preclude the application of advertising law.

A contest with a subscription to the brand

The brand provides the product, the blogger runs a giveaway, and the condition for participation is a subscription to the company's account. The definition of advertising in Article 3 of Law No. 38-FZ is tied to the purpose of distributing information: if the contest draws attention to a commercial account, the publication performs an advertising function.

Conclusion

Most schemes change the outward appearance of cooperation but leave its purpose unchanged. Circumventing the ban is impossible without changing the communication model itself. A blogger can organically mention a product in regular content; a brand can commission materials for its own social media and publish reference information. If a publication is created to promote a specific product to a blogger's audience, it is safer to treat it as advertising from the start. And regarding new mechanics, it is better to consult a lawyer before publication, not after a letter from the FAS.