After Facebook banned ads about cryptocurrency on its products, a practice also observed in China where crypto-related ads aren’t allowed online, Google just announced that it’ll restrict adverts for certain financial products, including cryptocurrency.
In fact, ads for Bitcoin and any kind of crypto product will not be allowed on Google AdWords starting June.
“In June 2018, Google will update the Financial services policy to restrict the advertisement of Contracts for Difference, rolling spot forex, and financial spread betting,” the company said in an update on its AdWords support pages.
Google makes it clear that ads for “binary options and synonymous products” will not be allowed. The same goes for “cryptocurrencies and related content (including but not limited to initial coin offerings, cryptocurrency exchanges, cryptocurrency wallets, and cryptocurrency trading advice).”
The news will affect companies who want to advertise their crypto services online, but also aggregators and affiliates who will no longer be able to show cryptocurrency content via Adwords.
Furthermore, “advertisers offering Contracts for Difference, rolling spot forex, and financial spread betting will be required to be certified by Google before they can advertise through AdWords,” Google notes.
Google mentioned the move in a separate blog post about its advertising business. The company explained that it has updated its ad policies to “address ads in unregulated or speculative financial products like binary options, cryptocurrency, foreign exchange markets and contracts for difference (or CFDs).”
Google is looking to improve the overall ad experience for internet users, giving various examples of how it punished deceptive content online last year, and what it plans to do to improve the ad experience.
“Last year, we removed 320,000 publishers from our ad network for violating our publisher policies, and blacklisted nearly 90,000 websites and 700,000 mobile apps,” the company said. It also removed some two million pages for policy violations each month.
