Google to Ban Cryptocurrency Related Ads
Google has announced that it is banning all advertisements about cryptocurrencies, initial coin offerings (ICOs), binary options, or anything related to these starting June.
According to Google, this move is part of a policy update that will put a ban on anything that is financially risky like "Contracts for Difference, rolling spot forex, and financial spread betting."
According to reports, searching for the term "Bitcoin" on the Google page will show advertisements of how to buy the cryptocurrency. Currently, those are the top results. Come June, however, no such ad will be seen on the research platform.
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Google reminds advertisers that it is very strict with its advertising policy. In a post published on Wednesday, March 14, Google boasted that it removed over 100 bad ads per second in 2017. That is a total of 3.2 billion ads that it deemed violated its advertising policies. "This means we're able to block the majority of bad ad experiences, like malvertising and phishing scams, before the scams impact people," wrote Scott Spencer, Google director of sustainable ads.
This new move from Google mirrors a similar policy from Facebook, which banned all kinds of cryptocurrency ads in January. In a blog post, Facebook product management director Rob Leathern explained that the social media platform will no longer allow ads that "promote financial products and services that are frequently associated with misleading or deceptive promotional practices."
With the current volatile nature of Bitcoins and other digital currencies, Google and Facebook are hoping to protect their users. Facebook said at that time, though, that it plans to re-visit the rule if ever cryptocurrencies become stable.
According to other reports, however, there are those who were able to go around the Facebook ban by misspelling the words, like replacing 0 for o in the word Bitcoin. Google said that knowing this possibility, it will be ready for people trying to evade the ban.
