PESHAWAR: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government has approved a new advertisement policy to allow the engaging of social media influencers for the effective propagation of its initiatives at village and neighbourhood council levels.

The provincial cabinet approved the KP Print, Electronic and Social/Digital Advertisement Policy, 2021, in a meeting on Wednesday.

The policy framed under the direction of Chief Minister Mahmood Khan said wanted a vibrant and robust advertisement policy to engage masses at grassroots level through social/digital media influencers for propagation of his government achievements.

The policy covers different aspects of government advertisement on print, television, outdoor, websites and social and digital media.

Regarding advertisement through social media influencers, the policy stated that the directorate can acquire the services of the social media influencers enlisted with the department for running targeted campaigns of the provincial government. “The social media influencers’ shall undertake the campaigns assigned to them through their respective pages/accounts/sites/channels etc. and provide access to the department to view/analyse the statistics in the real time,” it said.

Cabinet approves new media advertisement policy

According to it, social media influencers having 100,000 followers on Faceboook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube channel and blogs with 10,000 and above daily visitors will be eligible for the government advertisement. Influencers having 100,000 followers will receive dissemination charges of Rs10,000 on Facebook while Rs 20,000 on Twitter and YouTube.

On Facebook, influencers with up to 500,000 will be entitled for payment of Rs20,000 in dissemination charges, while on Twitter, similar following carry dissemination charges of Rs30,000 and on YouTube Rs35,000.

A Facebook influencer with over a million two million following will receive Rs60,000 in dissemination charges while a Twitter influencer with a million following will receive Rs70,000 in dissemination charges and a YouTube account with over a million followers will receive Rs75,000.

Regarding enlistment of social media platforms, the policy outlines that social platforms including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Google+, YouTube and other media streaming sites will be used for digital advertisement to be released by the directorate general of information and public relations.

“Advertisement for Facebook will include both advertisement as well as page boosting facility provided by its owner Meta Platforms,” it said.

The police also declared that the other social media platforms based on their reputation and user engagement could be considered if recommended by the directorate and that the task of social/digital campaigns would be assigned to at least three registered digital advertising agencies.

About the advertisement to websites, the policy said keeping in view that rising trend of digital media, the advertisement on reforms initiatives, special campaigns of the provincial government departments and other entities would be released to digital media.

Regarding the websites enlistment, it said only those websites would be entitled for government advertisement/communication which has been operational continuously for two years without a break under the same name and address. The English website should have 50,000 daily followers and 100,000 daily visitors for Urdu websites.

Websites advertising rates will be fixed on the basis of web traffic flow on cost per thousand impression basis. Besides, standard rate to be fixed in Pakistani rupee equivalent to $2 per CPMfor websites selected by the information department for home/landing pages.

The policy has classified newspapers into national, provincial and local newspapers. For the national paper, the policy has laid down the condition of minimum daily circulation of 15,000 copies per ABC certification. The provincial paper shall need to have a circulation of 10,000 daily copies and local newspapers 4000 copies.

The policy has also laid down criteria for inclusion and exclusion from the provincial media list, requirements of circulation, employment and minimum pages of newspapers.

Published in Dawn, January 7th, 2022