Taking a cue from Facebook, Google has announced that it will ban advertisements for cryptocurrencies and other "speculative financial products" across its ad platforms.
The ban on such advertisements will come into force from June. Updating its financial services-related ad policies to ban any advertising about cryptocurrency-related content, including initial coin offerings (ICOs), wallets and trading advice, the Alphabet-owned company said that this policy will apply globally to all accounts that advertise these financial products.
“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),” Scott Spencer, Google's Director of Sustainable Ads, said in a blog post on Tuesday.
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, Google said.
In January, social media giant Facebook banned all ads promoting cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin and ICOs. The new policy prohibits ads that promote financial products and services that are frequently associated with misleading or deceptive promotional practices, Facebook said in a statement.
We want people to continue to discover and learn about new products and services through Facebook ads, without fear of scams or deception.“That said, there are many companies who are advertising binary options, ICOs and cryptocurrencies that are not currently operating in good faith.Rob Leathern, Product Management Director, Facebook
However, according to DD Mishra, Research Director, Gartner, there have been instances of fraudulent advertisement from some of the bitcoin-based financial products, like the cryptocurrency-based investment funds which are banned in some countries.
There are also lots of misleading speculations around cryptocurrencies. The concern Google or Facebook may have at this point in time for its customers be genuine. But such policies to blanket ban certain products will have an adverse impact on its adoption as wellDD Mishra, Research Director, Gartner
All this is likely to have been prompted as scammers have reportedly been using "cryptojacking" or putting lines of code in websites or ads to surreptitiously harness the computing power of the web surfers who look at them.
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