Sectoral Approvals for Regulated Advertisers
Most advertisers on OOHUP don’t need any special approvals — your existing UAE trade license is enough. A handful of categories are regulated under UAE Federal Decree-Law No. 55 of 2023 on Media Regulation and the National Media Authority (NMA) content standards: those advertisers need a one-time approval letter from the relevant authority, uploaded once to OOHUP per campaign.
1. Overview
Under the NMA advertising-content standards (item 19 of the content standards and item 5 of the conditions for advertisements), specialised advertisements — health, education, real estate, Hajj/Umrah, medicines, financial services, and a few other categories — require prior approval from the relevant sectoral authority before they can run. OOHUP enforces this through the campaign-create flow: pick your category, upload the approval letter if one is required, and your campaign moves into review.
There is no per-ad regulatory fee. Sectoral approval letters are typically issued for free (or at the authority’s standard nominal fee), valid for a defined period, and can be reused across multiple OOHUP campaigns until they expire.
2. Who needs sectoral approval
If your business and ad message fall into any of the categories listed below, you’ll need to fetch the approval letter from the corresponding authority before your campaign can go live. If your business is none of these — for example, a café running a weekly promo, a salon advertising a new service, or a retail shop announcing new hours — you do not need sectoral approval, and your existing UAE trade license is enough.
3. Approving authorities — by category
| Regulated category | Approving authority |
|---|---|
Health · medical · clinic · dental · pharmacy services Also subject to Cabinet Resolution No. 4 of 2007 on health advertisements. | DHA (Dubai), MOHAP (federal), DOH (Abu Dhabi) |
Real estate | RERA (Dubai), TAMM (Abu Dhabi), ADREC |
Education · nursery · university | KHDA (Dubai), MOE (federal), ADEK (Abu Dhabi) |
Hajj · Umrah | MOIA (Ministry of Islamic Affairs) |
Medicine · pharmaceutical products | MOHAP |
Energy drinks · regulated F&B · special offers | DED (mainland) or the relevant free-zone authority |
Financial services · banking · insurance · forex | Central Bank of the UAE; SCA (Securities & Commodities Authority) |
4. Prohibited categories
A small number of categories cannot be advertised in any form under UAE law (NMA content standards 13–14) — no approval letter exists for them, and no campaign in those categories will be cleared on the OOHUP network. If you’re unsure whether your category can run, contact compliance@oohup.ae before booking.
5. The 4-step process
- Choose your category at campaign create. The campaign-create flow asks you to pick a category from a closed list. If the category is regulated, the form asks for a sectoral-approval letter before you can submit.
- Fetch the approval letter from the listed authority. Apply directly with the authority shown in the table above (e.g., DHA for a Dubai clinic ad, RERA for a Dubai real-estate ad). The approval is typically a single PDF letter with the authority’s reference number and a validity period.
- Upload the PDF to OOHUP. Attach the letter to the campaign through the OOHUP campaign-create form. We hash and store it against your campaign record.
- We verify and your campaign goes live. An OOHUP admin confirms the letter matches the category and is in date. Once cleared, the campaign flows to payment and goes live on the scheduled start date.
6. If you don’t have approval
If your category is regulated and no valid approval letter is on file, the campaign cannot go live. We’ll hold it in compliance review and contact you with the steps to obtain the missing letter. Once the letter is uploaded and verified, the campaign resumes from where it paused — no need to start over.
Running a regulated-category ad without sectoral approval is a direct violation of UAE Federal Decree-Law No. 55 of 2023 and the National Media Authority advertising-content standards. OOHUP enforces this at the platform level so neither you nor the venue hosting the ad is ever exposed to penalty.
7. Contact
Not sure whether your campaign needs sectoral approval? Email compliance@oohup.ae with a short description of your business and the ad message, and we’ll tell you within 1 business day. For general questions, see our UAE advertising-standards compliance page.
Source: UAE Federal Decree-Law No. 55 of 2023 on Media Regulation; National Media Authority advertising-content standards (formerly NMC Advertising Guide); Cabinet Resolution No. 4 of 2007 on health advertisements. OOHUP FZ-LLC, Dubai, UAE.