Facebook loosens advertising policy for cryptocurrency and blockchain-related ads

Editor Note: 17/05/2019 – Updated article to include comment from a crypto company affected by the policy update, and added comment on the expected effects of this policy change for blockchain and crypto products/services.

Last year in January, the social media giant Facebook, severely limited the ability to advertise any crypto or blockchain related content on its platform. Later the same year, they re-enabled the advertisement but put every ad under a specialized approval team dedicated to cryptocurrency and blockchain. Now, things seem to be changing, according to the latest update of Facebook’s ad policy.

The director of product management at Facebook Rob Learnth, at the time of the original ban, said: “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.”

What are the changes?

Any form of advertisement about initial coin offerings and crypto financial products are still banned. Considering the high-level of fraud and mismanagement that has resulted in the past, Facebook has shown no clear interest in re-enabling access to their 2.38 billion users for ICO marketing purposes. This is most certainly a good thing for crypto investors, but a very difficult challenge for ICO marketers.

The ban is actually increased by this update to also encompass other financial offers, such as CFDs, and complex financial products. We’ve reached out to one of the most popular social trading platforms that incorporates cryptocurrency for a comment about how these changes affect them. Unfortunately, we weren’t able to receive their public comment about these changes.

Regarding the ads about cryptocurrency and blockchain, they will no longer require prior approval if they are related to blockchain technology, industry news, education, or crypto/blockchain events. These types of advertisers should have an easier time dealing with the publication of their ads on the platform.

The policy remains unchanged for businesses such as cryptocurrency exchanges, miner products, or anything that is closely related to crypto. Companies are required to share public information with Facebook before they are able to use the platform’s ad services.

How will the changes affect the crypto and blockchain products/services?

To get a better understanding of how this will affect crypto-specific advertisement providers, so we reached out to one of the main providers of banner ads and other forms of advertising for the crypto industry Cointraffic, and this is what they had to say:

“As true supporters of the cryptocurrency, we are always pleased to note when crypto and blockchain gain the recognition it deserves. With this in mind, we also value healthy competition – it seems that recent changes to Facebook advertising policy means that the platform will offer some ad services.

Despite this we see no issues to our service offering – crypto advertising development on the traditional market will bring not only interest but will stimulate projects in the crypto sphere. We will keep doing our best to provide the most relevant niche traffic to promote the hottest up and coming projects in the industry.

Competition is a healthy thing – it invigorates industry which means that there are more options for advertisers and growth in the crypto community and projects. We will concentrate on more unique services including skins, native ads, press releases and the such.

We look forward to working with our partners to continue delivering value add to the community.” Sergei Verbitski, Founder of Cointraffic.

It seems that Facebook’s recent policy changes are welcomed even by one of their competitors in the crypto industry.

Undoubtedly, this policy change will help event organizers, media websites such as ours, and other providers of services and products associated with cryptocurrency and blockchain to have an easier time getting their ads published on the platform.

At the same time, Facebook will continue to ban ICOs and other token offerings to protect its users from potentially harmful investments.

Reader opinion:

Does this change in policy reflect the increase of legitimacy in the crypto industry, or is it a result coming from the company’s rumored endeavors in cryptocurrency?

Let us know in the comment section!