Before Your Store Publishes an Ad, a Paid Post or an Offer: What Must an Electronic Advertisement Contain, What Is Prohibited in It, and What Do You Keep on File?

Is your store bound by what its ad promises?

Yes. Article 10 of the E-Commerce Law, in its first paragraph, provides that an electronic advertisement is one of the contractual documents that complement contracts and that it binds the parties to the contract. In practice, what your ad says about price, specification, delivery date or a gift that comes with the order becomes part of the deal with the customer who bought on the strength of it, so do not rely on different terms written on another page of the store to step back from what the ad said.

This is why reviewing any ad starts with a simple question: can we honour every sentence in it for every customer who orders during the offer? If the quantity is limited, the offer covers only certain products, or delivery is only to certain cities, say so clearly in the ad itself, because the ad is what the customer will rely on. The Law applies to service providers inside the Kingdom, and to practitioners outside it who offer products or services in a way that lets consumers reach them.

What must every electronic advertisement contain?

Every electronic advertisement must carry the information listed in Article 10 of the Law, the additions set by Article 10 of the Implementing Regulation, and the licences the product or service needs. Paragraph 2 of Article 10 of the Law lists the following:

• The name of the advertised product or service.
• The name of the service provider and any distinguishing statement for it, unless it is registered with one of the e-store authentication bodies.
• The means of contacting the service provider.
• Any other information set by the Implementing Regulation.

Article 10 of the Implementing Regulation of the E-Commerce Law, a regulation issued by the Ministry of Commerce and presumed to be in force with the Law, adds that the ad must contain the following when it is published or sent, together with related duties on the service provider:

• A clear statement that it is advertising material.
• The information about the product or service that lets the consumer make the decision with awareness and understanding.
• A way for the consumer to ask that electronic ads stop being sent to them, with sending stopped as soon as the request is received.
• Compliance with the laws on advertising and their controls, and obtaining the licences required by the nature of the product or service.

If your product or service is regulated by a specialised authority, you may need that authority's approval before you advertise, not after. The E-Commerce Law does not name these authorities or their procedures, so check with the authority responsible for your product before launching the campaign, and keep the proof in its file.

What is prohibited in an electronic ad, and what can the Ministry of Commerce do about a violation?

Article 11 of the Law prohibits an electronic advertisement from containing two things:

• An offer, statement or claim that is false, or worded in terms that would directly or indirectly deceive or mislead the consumer.
• A logo or trademark that the service provider has no right to use, or a counterfeit mark.

The prohibition is not limited to outright falsehoods, since the text covers wording that leads to deception or misleading, even indirectly. So review against this standard any product image that does not match what will arrive, absolute superiority claims with no evidence behind them, and any hint of a prize or gift the buyer will not receive as the ad led them to understand.

If it is established that a service provider breached the mandatory content in paragraph 2 of Article 10 or the prohibitions in Article 11, Article 12 of the Law allows the Ministry to require it to remove the violation or withdraw the ad within one day of being notified, without prejudice to the penalties in Article 18. One day is short, and a store that knows where each ad was published and who has the authority to stop it is best placed to meet it.

Article 18 provides that anyone who breaches any provision of the Law or the Regulation is liable to one or more of the following penalties, without prejudice to any harsher penalty in another law: a warning, a fine of no more than one million riyals, temporary or permanent suspension from e-commerce, and blocking of the e-store, partly or fully, temporarily or permanently, in coordination with the competent authority. In choosing the penalty, the Law takes into account the gravity and repetition of the violation, the size of the service provider's business and the harm it caused to others.

In practice, Okaz newspaper reported in May 2026 that the Ministry of Commerce referred an online perfume store to the committee that hears E-Commerce Law violations after an ad in which it promised customers prizes and then delivered different gifts. This is the newspaper's report, and we did not see it on an official page for this guide.

How do you present price, discounts and contests in an ad?

Show the total price the customer will actually pay. Article 7 of the Law requires the service provider to give the consumer, before the contract, a statement that includes, among other things, the total price including all fees, taxes or additional delivery charges, if any, and the Implementing Regulation details this as the original price, delivery costs, taxes if any, and any other costs that may be charged later with how they are calculated. Since the ad binds and complements the contract, an ad that shows a lower price than the one that appears at checkout exposes the store to the risk of being treated as misleading.

Discounts, sales, contests and prizes have rules outside the E-Commerce Law. The Anti-Commercial Fraud Law, one of the laws connected to promotional offers, is marked in the database of laws we rely on as under work, meaning its text is being updated. For that reason this guide states no licence requirement, fee, percentage or period for discounts or contests. Before you announce any offer or contest, check the current requirements with the Ministry of Commerce through its official channels, and keep what you obtained in the campaign file.

• Write the price in the ad including tax, and state delivery charges if any, or say delivery is free if it is.
• State the start and end dates of the offer and any limit on quantity or on the products covered.
• If you show a price before the discount, keep proof that it is the price the store was actually selling at.

What do you do about a paid post with a content creator, and about marketing messages?

A post you pay a content creator for is an electronic advertisement for your store, so it must carry a clear statement that it is advertising material, as Article 10 of the Implementing Regulation requires, along with the rest of the mandatory content and the prohibitions above. Put this duty in writing in the contract with the creator, with the store's right to review the text before publication and a bar on any claim about the product that the store has not approved.

The General Authority for Media Regulation, according to its e-services page, offers a licence to provide advertising content through social media platforms, known as Mawthooq, and describes it as a service that allows individuals to provide advertising content via social media platforms. Before you contract, ask the creator for a copy of the licence, check it, and keep it in the campaign file. We did not verify the licence fee, its term, its exemptions or the penalty for breaching it on an official page for this guide, so refer to the Authority directly for those.

If the campaign is marketing messages by SMS, WhatsApp or email, then in addition to the above the Implementing Regulation of the E-Commerce Law requires you to give the consumer a way to ask that ads stop and to stop as soon as they ask. The conditions for using your customers' data in marketing under the Personal Data Protection Law are explained in our published guide on sending offers by WhatsApp, SMS and email, so read it before sending any message.

What are the review steps before publishing any campaign, and what file do you keep?

Apply these steps in order to every ad, paid post or offer, and do not publish until all are complete. They differ from our guide on selling through social platforms, which covers ads in one step within the store terms, because here the focus is the ad itself, from drafting to archiving:

1. Write the final text and prepare the images and videos, and check that the ad names the product or service, the store and any distinguishing statement for it, and a clear means of contact.
2. Add a clear statement that it is advertising material, and make sure the information shown is enough for the customer to decide with awareness.
3. Review every claim in the ad, such as original, tested or best selling, ask for written evidence behind it, and delete whatever has none.
4. Check that the advertised price is the total including tax and delivery charges if any, and that it matches what the customer will see at checkout.
5. If the ad includes a discount, contest or prize, check the Ministry of Commerce's current requirements before publishing and keep the proof.
6. Remove any logo or trademark your store has no right to use, including competitors' marks.
7. If the product is regulated by a specialised authority, check whether its approval is needed before publishing.
8. If a content creator will publish, sign the contract with them, obtain a copy of their licence, and agree the advertising disclosure wording.
9. If the campaign is direct messages, make sure there is a way to ask to stop and a process to act on it at once.
10. Have a named person in the store approve the ad in writing, decide who has the authority to withdraw it within one day if the Ministry requires it, then publish.

Keep one file for each campaign containing the following, so you can respond if the Ministry asks for the ad to be removed or a customer disputes what it promised:

• The approved copy of the ad as published, with its text, images, publication date and placement.
• The evidence behind every claim made in the ad.
• The advertised price and its breakdown, the offer's start and end dates and conditions, and proof of checking the offer requirements with the Ministry.
• The creator contract and a copy of their licence, and any regulatory approval the product needed.
• The name of who approved the ad and the approval date, and a log of requests to stop messages and when they were acted on.

The E-Ads Compliance Checklist D-08 helps you document this review for each campaign in one document, complemented by the Online Store Terms D-02, which govern your relationship with the customer after purchase, and the Influencer Agreement C-07 when you work with a content creator.

Which mistakes are easy to make in store ads?

Four mistakes are easy to make, and each can be avoided with a short review before publishing:

• A price without tax: an ad that shows one figure and then adds tax or delivery charges at checkout, while the pre-contract statement requires the total price including fees and taxes.
• A claim without evidence: a superiority statement or guaranteed result the store cannot prove, which may be treated as a misleading claim under Article 11.
• A paid post without disclosure: sponsored content presented as the creator's personal opinion, with no clear statement that it is advertising material as the Implementing Regulation requires.
• A competitor's mark in the ad: placing a competitor's logo or mark in a comparison ad without a right to use it, which Article 11 prohibits.

Sighaty templates are certified drafts and a strong starting point, but they do not replace a lawyer's advice on an existing dispute or on a product subject to special regulation.

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