The National
Broadcasting Council

‘The KRRiT consistently maintains that product placement must not amount to hidden advertising, and must be carried out in compliance with the applicable rules and in the interests of audiences’, stressed the Chair of the National Broadcasting Council, Dr Agnieszka Glapiak.

In its judgment of 20 November 2025, the Court confirmed that the way one food brand's products were presented in the broadcaster's programme amounted to excessive exposure that, in effect, constituted advertising. This meant that the applicable product-placement rules set out in law had been breached.

In its justification, the Court identified the key criteria that determined this assessment. These included several-second close-ups of the products, the framing of food-preparation scenes so that the placed products were in the foreground, and direct references to them by people appearing in the programme. In the Court's view, the mere fact that the products shown were related to the programme's subject matter did not eliminate the breach of the rules.

The Court also rejected the broadcaster's argument that excessive exposure could only apply to a single specific product. The judgment's reasoning stressed that a breach of product-placement rules also occurs when different products are shown on screen, provided they carry the trademark of the same manufacturer.

This judgment marks another success for the National Broadcasting Council in its action against excessive product placement by broadcasters. It is worth recalling that, on 28 June 2024, a judgment of the Regional Court in Warsaw confirmed the validity of KRRiT's objections concerning the placement of a spring-water brand in the TVN programme ‘Dzień dobry wakacje’. On 21 February 2025, a judgment favourable to the National Broadcasting Council was also handed down in a case concerning the placement of jewellery in the TVP programme ‘Pytanie na śniadanie’ (‘A Question at Breakfast’).