By
Mayowa Adebajo
January 29th, 2024
Google will ban any ads for cryptocurrency and ICO starting in June. Other speculative financial instruments such as rolling spot forex, binary options, Contracts for Difference will no longer be allowed on Google’s AdWords platform as well.
Search giant Google has announced it will ban advertisements for cryptocurrency and initial coin offerings. The ban will be implemented in June this year.
Google is following Facebook in such bannings. In Janury, Facebook banned all ads promoting cryptocurrencies and ICOs as these ads are “frequently associated with misleading or deceptive promotional practices.”
Recently there were Google’s plans to bar crypto-related ads, but the search giant had no special policy of any kind regarding cryptocurrencies and ICOs. Now it has got about updating Google’s policy which will ban risky financial products.
According to Google’s blog post, ad content “including but not limited to Initial Coin Offerings (ICO), cryptocurrency exchanges, cryptocurrency wallets, and cryptocurrency trading advice” will be blacklisted. Contracts for Difference, rolling spot forex, financial spread betting, binary options and synonymous products, cryptocurrencies and related content will no longer be allowed to serve.
“Advertisers offering Contracts for Difference, rolling spot forex, and financial spread betting will be required to be certified by Google,” the post says.
In another post, Google wrote that in 2017 it took down more than 3.2 billion ads in violation of its policies. The company also pointed to constant updating of its policy.
“We’re constantly updating our policies as we see new threats emerge. Last year, we added 28 new advertiser policies and 20 new publisher policies to combat new threats and improve the ads experience online. This year, we updated several policies to address ads in unregulated or speculative financial products like binary options, cryptocurrency, foreign exchange markets and contracts for difference (or CFDs).”
Last year, Google generated $95.4 billion in ad revenue, up 20% from 2016.
The work to protect the ads ecosystem doesn’t stop here — it’s ongoing. “As consumer trends evolve, as our methods to protect the open web get better, so do online scams. Improving the ads experience across the web, whether that’s removing harmful ads or intrusive ads, will continue to be a top priority for us,” the company says.
Google has not explained in details the reasons of its ban, but the new policy comes simultaneously with U.S. regulators’ effort at both state and federal levels in cracking down ICOs that appear dubious in the government’s view.
As reported before, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has also issued multiple warnings regarding its increasing effort in monitoring initial coin offerings that the agency may deem as issuing unregistered securities.
The U.S. is not the only country concerned with crypto regulations. Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are volatile, so many governments are clamping down on the digital tokens. For example, India doesn’t consider Bitcoin to be legal tender, China is increasingly cracking down on digital currencies, while Korea is planning a bill to ban all domestic cryptocurrency trading.