Come June, you will see no ads on cryptocurrencies on YouTube and on other Google platforms. The tech giant just announced that they will ban advertisements for cryptocurrencies and related products that can raise millions of dollar from investors. The ban will apply to ads on YouTube and to third-party websites where Google sells ad space.
“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 AdWords support page.
The new ad restriction is a part of a crackdown on risky unregulated financial products and it comes on the heels of Facebook adopting similar policies in January to ban all cryptocurrencies and initial coin offerings. Together, Google and Facebook command about 85 percent of world’s online-ad dollars.
“Google is updating its policies as it sees cryptocurrencies as new threats to the user experience,” Scott Spencer, Google’s Director of Sustainable Ads said in a blog post. He also said that this year Google will address ads in unregulated or speculative financial products.
The search giant is also restricting ads that promote binary options and synonymous products. The same is applied to content related to cryptocurrencies including but not limited to initial coin offerings, cryptocurrency exchanges, cryptocurrency wallets and cryptocurrency trading advice.
In a blog post, Google has cited various instances on how it punished deceptive content online last year and what it plans to do to improve the ad experiences online.
“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. We removed 2 million pages for policy violations each month,” the company said.
Bitcoin weathered a series of blows this year. After the Google’s announcement Bitcoin slipped to a five-week low on Thursday. Last week, the US Securities and Exchange Commission warned investors that cryptocurrency exchanges were not regulated.
Earlier, Finance minister Arun Jaitley in his budget speech said that the government doesn’t recognise cryptocurrency as legal tender or coin and will take all necessary measures to eliminate the use of these crypto assets in financing illegitimate activities or as part of the payments system.
