Overseas out-of-home · Vietnam OOH

OUTDOOR,IN VIETNAM

What you actually need to know to run outdoor advertising in Vietnam: the formats and where they are, the two approvals a site has to pass, the categories that cannot be advertised at all, and what the brand has to supply. SELLi has run Vietnamese outdoor for aT, Frasers Property, Lotte's PEPERO and Ulike.

Last checked

The short answer

Vietnamese outdoor advertising passes two separate processes: a notification of the advertising content to the local advertising authority (Law on Advertising, Articles 29 and 30), and a construction permit for the structure itself (Article 31). If the authority does not respond within 5 working days of confirming receipt, you may proceed. Permits take 15 or 20 days depending on whether the site sits inside an approved local plan. Vietnamese text is mandatory, and foreign text may be no more than three quarters its size and must sit below it.

The vocabulary first

OOH stands for out-of-home: every advertising medium encountered outside the house. People hear "outdoor" and picture a billboard, but the process and the pricing differ completely by format, so the names are worth getting right before anything else.

OOH and DOOH
OOH covers billboards, screens, transit, lift media, airport and mall inventory. DOOH is the digital subset, where the creative is played rather than printed.
Billboard (biển quảng cáo tấm lớn)
A large printed panel on its own structure. The trade writes biển quảng cáo tấm lớn; the statute writes bảng quảng cáo. They mean the same thing, so do not be surprised when the contract and the filing use different words.
Pano (biển ốp tường)
Frequently confused with a billboard by foreign advertisers. In Vietnam a pano is wall-mounted, attached to an existing building. It is a different medium from a freestanding billboard and the permit thresholds below treat it differently.
LED screen (màn hình LED)
A digital outdoor display running video. Because several brands share the loop, the pricing and the exposure arithmetic work differently from print.
Lift media (quảng cáo thang máy)
Screens and framed panels inside office and apartment building lifts. It reaches urban white-collar and middle-class households repeatedly and exists at a scale that has no real Korean equivalent.
Transit (quảng cáo xe buýt, taxi)
Advertising on the outside of buses and taxis. As below, Vietnamese law limits both the area and which faces may carry it, so a full wrap is not possible.
Advertising product notification (thông báo sản phẩm quảng cáo)
Telling the local advertising authority what will run, where, and for how long. It is a notification and not a licence: if nobody objects within the statutory window, you may run it.
Construction permit (giấy phép xây dựng công trình quảng cáo)
A building permit for the structure rather than the advertisement. Only sites above the size thresholds need one, and it is separate from the notification above.

Why outdoor works unusually hard in Vietnam

In Korea outdoor is close to a supporting medium. In Vietnam it is not, and the reason is not taste. It is how people move through the city.

The city currently has 4,734km of roads, 952km of waterways and 1,160 bridges. With the advantage of that road network, dense traffic, and its natural and socio-economic conditions, the city has still not managed to exploit this to develop OOH.

Nguyễn Thị Lệ, Chairwoman of the Ho Chi Minh City People's CouncilCông an Nhân dân, 27 November 2023

The Vietnamese government has named advertising one of ten priority cultural industries and set a target, in Prime Ministerial Decision 2486/QĐ-TTg, of roughly 80,000 billion VND (about US$3.2 billion) in advertising revenue by 2030, with outdoor explicitly included in the definition. Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism material puts Vietnam third in Southeast Asia by advertising market scale and second by growth rate.

The formats, and where they are

These are the media SELLi can actually book in Vietnam. Which one fits the objective has to be settled before the budget is.

FormatLocal termTypically whereWhat it suits
Billboardbiển quảng cáo tấm lớnArterial roads in Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi, airport approaches, highwaysBrand awareness. Long runs that put a name into a whole city
Wallscapepano, biển ốp tườngBuilding facades in the central districtsPresence inside one district. The anchor of a larger campaign
LED screenmàn hình LEDCentral intersections, department store and mall facadesSeasonal and time-boxed campaigns, because the creative can change
Lift mediaquảng cáo thang máyOffice and apartment buildings (LCD screens, frames, standees)Repeat reach against urban middle-class audiences, narrowly targeted
Mall mediaquảng cáo tại trung tâm thương mạiEscalator decals, ceiling banners, lightboxes, POSMPaired with retail listing. The point closest to purchase
Airportquảng cáo tại sân bayTân Sơn Nhất and Nội Bài lightboxes, LED, baggage trolleysInbound and outbound travellers. Premium positioning
Bus shelterquảng cáo nhà chờ xe buýtStreet-level shelters in the centrePedestrian routes, at a relatively low unit cost
Transitquảng cáo xe buýt, taxiBus and taxi bodies (area restricted, see below)Moving reach. Check the legal limits first
Bannersbăng-rôn, phướnLamp posts, around event sitesShort campaigns. Statutory display limit of 15 days

The confusion foreign advertisers hit most often is billboard versus pano. In Vietnam a pano is wall-mounted and is a different medium from a freestanding billboard.

What has to be cleared legally

Two different things have to clear. One concerns the advertisement, the other concerns the structure holding it. A large billboard needs both.

Advertising product notification (Articles 29 and 30)
Filed with the local advertising authority: what will run, where, when and for how long, plus a copy of the business registration, product conformity documents, a signed printed mock-up (ma-két), evidence of the right to use the site, a site context rendering, and where required, a copy of the construction permit below.
Construction permit (Article 31)
Issued by the local construction authority for the structure itself. Only sites above the thresholds below need one, and it is an entirely separate filing from the notification.

Construction permit timing depends on whether the site falls inside an approved local outdoor advertising plan. If it does, 15 days from receipt of a valid dossier. If the locality has not yet approved a plan, the file goes out for departmental consultation and the total is 20 days (Article 31(4)).

  • **Vehicle advertising limits (Article 32(2))** · No advertising on the front, rear or roof of a vehicle, and no more than 50% of the area of each face that may carry it. The full-wrap bus familiar to Korean marketers is not possible in Vietnam.
  • **Banner display period (Article 27(4))** · Banners may not hang for more than 15 days.
  • **Screen restrictions (Article 28(2))** · Outdoor advertising screens may not emit sound, and their light must not affect traffic safety.
  • **Other prohibited categories (Article 7)** · Goods and services banned from trade, breast-milk substitutes for children under 24 months, supplementary nutrition products for infants under 6 months, feeding bottles and artificial teats, prescription medicines, products of an erotic nature, hunting guns and sporting weapons, and products inciting violence.

Why Ho Chi Minh City inventory is scarce

The question that comes up most often is why the good sites are always unavailable. It is an administrative answer, not a commercial one.

Articles 37 and 38 of the Law on Advertising require each province and city to maintain an outdoor advertising master plan setting the design, size, quantity and placement of media, and put the duty on the provincial People's Committee. Ho Chi Minh City's plan dates from 2003, and with the zoning never completed the city went more than a decade without issuing new permits. Báo Văn Hóa, the Ministry of Culture's own newspaper, reported that situation and noted the department processes around 3,000 notification dossiers a year against it.

Two practical consequences. New structures in Ho Chi Minh City go through the slower consultation route that applies where no plan exists. And because of that, what actually trades is mostly existing sites, where the next contract is usually agreed before the current one ends. Hanoi behaves differently. Which city you are running in therefore has to be decided before the budget is.

How a buy actually runs

  1. Settle the objective and the city

    Before choosing a format

    Building awareness and driving footfall to a specific store are different media problems. And because Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi sit in different permitting environments, knowing which city and what for is what allows a shortlist of sites to exist at all.

  2. Check the sites and hold availability

    Including a physical inspection

    You cannot choose a site from a photograph. What the sightline really is, what obstructs it, from which direction it reads: those are checked on the ground. It is why SELLi keeps an office in Ho Chi Minh City. Availability windows and minimum terms are confirmed at the same time.

  3. Build the creative to local rules

    Where filings are most often rejected

    Vietnamese has to be on it, and foreign text may be no more than three quarters the size of the Vietnamese and must sit below it. Artwork brought over unchanged from Korea usually has to be rebuilt at this point, so the rules go into the layout at design stage rather than after.

  4. File the notification

    Five working days from confirmed receipt

    The mock-up, the business documents, evidence of the right to use the site, the site rendering, and where relevant the construction permit, all go in together. If nobody objects within five working days of the authority confirming receipt, the advertisement may run.

  5. Production and installation

    Varies by medium

    Print needs output and rigging; LED needs encoding and scheduling into the loop. Installation dates depend on the media owner's own works schedule, so approval alone does not fix the live date.

  6. Verification and reporting

    Proof of posting

    Photographic confirmation that it went up and that it stays up. Outdoor is not a medium you hang and forget; condition has to be managed across the run.

What the brand has to supply

City and dates
Where, from when, for how long. Without it no site can be held. If the campaign is seasonal, the date is the first thing to tell us.
Original design assets
Vector logos, high-resolution imagery and the fonts. Outdoor output sizes are large enough that web-resolution files cannot be used.
Brand guidelines
Logo rules and colour values. The layout has to be rebuilt to carry Vietnamese, so we need to know how far it may be adjusted.
The message, not the sentence
What the line has to communicate rather than a sentence to translate. Rewriting in Vietnamese is almost always better, and more so now the amended law explicitly requires the Vietnamese to be clear and accurate.
Product category check
Whether the product is alcohol, tobacco, medicine or infant food. If a prohibition applies, the media choice changes or disappears.
Business documentation
The company information and product evidence the notification requires. Without a local entity, who files has to be settled first.

Outdoor SELLi has actually run

These campaigns were planned and executed by SELLi on the ground in Vietnam. Each links to its case study.

  • aT, Korea Agro-Fisheries and Food Trade Corporation · Korean strawberries on Vietnamese outdoor. With produce the season is the deadline, and booking local sites directly is what let the campaign run on time
  • Frasers Property · Outdoor for a global property group. In property the district is the message, so which sites we took mattered more than how many impressions they delivered
  • PEPERO · Lotte's PEPERO across prime Vietnamese districts, putting a brand Koreans already know onto the everyday routes of local shoppers
  • Lotte Group · Billboards and LED signage planned and run across Ho Chi Minh City and other prime districts
Vietnam market entry: sequence and timingIf the product is not yet legally sellable in Vietnam, start with this document instead

On effectiveness, honestly

Almost every quantified claim about outdoor effectiveness comes from a media owner or an industry body. Saying so and then citing it is better than not saying so.

In a March 2023 study the US Out of Home Advertising Association commissioned from Morning Consult, among adults who had noticed an outdoor advertisement within the previous 60 days, 43% visited the store, business or restaurant within 30 minutes of seeing it, and of those, 78% made a purchase the last time they did. The sample was 1,461 adults aged 18 to 64, margin of error plus or minus 3 percentage points.

Questions we are asked

Do I need a permit to run outdoor advertising in Vietnam?
There are two things. The advertising content is notified rather than licensed: if the local advertising authority does not respond within 5 working days of confirming receipt, you may run it (Article 30). A construction permit is separately required only for screens with one face of 20 square metres or more, building-mounted panels over 20 square metres on a structural frame, and freestanding panels of 40 square metres or more (Article 31).
Can the advertisement be in English or Korean only?
No. Vietnamese must appear, and where a foreign language is used alongside it the foreign characters may not exceed three quarters the size of the Vietnamese and must sit below them (Article 18(2)). Trademarks, brand names, slogans and proper nouns are exempt, so a brand logotype can stay as it is.
How far ahead do I need to plan?
The notification runs on 5 working days from confirmed receipt, and a construction permit takes 15 days where an approved local plan exists or 20 where it does not. What really sets the schedule, though, is the site rather than the paperwork. Ho Chi Minh City has not updated its outdoor advertising plan since 2003 and effectively stopped issuing new structure permits for over a decade, so good sites are usually re-let before the current contract ends. No published statistic on booking lead times exists, so if your campaign date is fixed, tell us the date first.
Can soju or beer brands run outdoor?
Alcohol at 15 degrees ABV or above cannot be advertised at all under Article 7, which covers most Korean soju. Alcohol from 5.5 to under 15 degrees and beer at 5.5 degrees or above are banned from every outdoor medium except the seller's own shop signboard, and even sub-5.5% beer cannot appear on buses, taxis or other vehicles (Law No. 44/2019/QH14, Articles 12 and 13).
Can we do a full bus wrap?
No. Article 32(2) prohibits advertising on the front, rear and roof of a vehicle, and caps the advertisement at 50% of the area of each face that may carry it.
Can we run without a Vietnamese entity?
Yes. The notification does require business documentation and evidence of the right to use the site, so who files has to be settled up front. SELLi handles that side locally from its Ho Chi Minh City office.
Ho Chi Minh City or Hanoi?
It depends on the objective, and the administrative environments differ: Hanoi approved an outdoor advertising plan in 2018, Ho Chi Minh City is still drafting one. Research estimates put the two cities together at roughly 70% of national outdoor spend. Concentrating on one city usually beats splitting the budget.
Do you run outdoor in other countries?
Vietnam is the market where SELLi has actually executed outdoor. We do not list others, because we do not claim work we have not done. If you are considering another market, ask and we will tell you honestly whether we can take it.

Sources

Tell us the city, the dates and the product category, and we will come back with the media and the specific sites that are possible.

Talk to us about outdoor