Google bans cryptocurrency ads in high-risk product crackdown

Online advertisements promoting cryptocurrencies and initial coin offerings will be banned on Google, the tech giant has announced.

Google bans cryptocurrency ads in high-risk product crackdown

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Largely unregulated and poorly understood, virtual currencies carry a lot of the indicators of an investment bubble.

This has not deterred people from parting with their cash, however, and Google has identified ads on its site as triggers to invest.

In a statement released Wednesday, Google confirmed that it has updated its policies to combat new advertising threats as they emerge – including the increasingly popular cryptocurrency space.

“Last year, we added 28 new advertiser policies and 20 new publisher policies to combat new threats and improve the ads experience online,” wrote Scott Spencer, Google’s director of sustainable ads.

“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 (CFD).”

The changes are understood to come into effect in June 2018.

 

Scam awareness

In 2017, Google took down more than 3.2 billion ads that violated its advertising policies – equating to more than 100 bad ads per second.

“This means we’re able to block the majority of bad ad experiences, like malvertising and phishing scams, before the scams impact people,” Spencer added.

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