Back in 2017, cryptocurrencies experienced the biggest crypto boom yet, showing an uncontrolled growth that blew through anyone’s expectations. Bitcoin rose the $20k mark and everybody started paying attention to digital assets. Unfortunately, this situation also caused a lot of unfairness in the market, fake projects surged and took advantage of investors, accounting for millions of dollars in losses. Regulators began taking a rather negative stand towards cryptocurrencies, and especially Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs), forcing the hand of well-known social media platforms and advertisers such as Facebook and Google, who change its policies and began blocking any crypto/ICO/blockchain related ads from their platforms.
Facebook changed its policies back in June 2018, banning all sorts of ICO related ads due to investors being defrauded by fake ICO projects that promised great returns. Most of these projects ended up fading away, taking people’s money in exchange for basically nothing.
According to the press release published by Facebook, the social media giant announced the upcoming changes of its ads policies, after analyzing the market and the regulatory measures taken by the Government in the last few months. Facebook also recognizes the huge importance of blockchain technology and how this tech is set to change many things, implying that this was the main reason why they’re reconsidered their stand towards this new tech altogether. Thanks to this upcoming update, users will be able to advertise blockchain related projects on the platform, starting June 5th.
As with all ads on Facebook, we require that the ad’s text, targeting, positioning, images and content on the landing page comply with this updated policy as well as with all of our Advertising Policies and Community Standards
Unfortunately, this upcoming policy update won’t cover ICOs or cryptocurrency related ads, not even crypto exchanges, given that those are currently being considered as financial services and are regulated on a state level. The actual policy for ads requires prior authorization from Facebook to ensure that the content of the campaign does not violate any regulations or promotes fake advertising.
