Google has allegedly blacklisted “Ethereum” keyword from its Google Ads platform. According to a Serbia-based blockchain startup Decenter, the keyword ‘Ethereum’ is no longer available on the Google Ads platform. They reported this issue to Twitter.
Google Ads promptly responded to the tweet. They said that crypto-related ads that target regions other than the United States and Japan are not allowed. Hence, that might be the reason the keyword was blacklisted.
“Advertisers may promote cryptocurrency exchanges that target the United States and Japan. Hence, you may not be able to run ads which target other countries. Hope this helps. Do let us know if you have any additional questions.”
Hey, Chetan. We're actually a developers team doing smart contract security audits so we're seeing this error for keywords such as "ethereum security audits" and "ethereum development services". Would you say that this is expected behaviour or can we fix it some way? Thanks.
— Decenter (@DecenterTeam) January 10, 2019
After getting back to the Decenter’s tweet, Google Ads Twitter admin referred the team to their policy guidelines.
“Although we wouldn’t be able to preemptively confirm if your keyword is eligible to trigger ads, we’d recommend that you refer to the ‘Cryptocurrencies’ section of our policy on Financial products and services.”
Unsatisfied with Google’s response, the team took to Reddit to get more answers.
“Any of the keywords that contain “Ethereum” in our campaigns are no longer showing ads as of January 9th and are now reporting the following error.”
The vast majority in the Reddit community criticized Google’s decision to ban “Ethereum” keyword in specific regions.
Google crypto ads ban
This is not the first time the search engine giant is banning crypto-related ads. Early last year, it banned all Bitcoin and crypto-related adverts on its platform. The policy followed similar bans from Twitter and Facebook.
In October last year, however, Google lifted the controversial crypto ads ban. The Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) remained banned to this day. Even so, only regulated exchanges are permitted to purchase ad spaces from Google.
According to both Google and Facebook, there was a lack of adequate consumer protections for such speculative trades, hence the ban. The value of the top cryptocurrencies dipped significantly following the news.
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