Following an update to their Financial Services policy in June 2018 which saw a blanket ban on all crypto-related advertising, Google had a change of heart, partially reversing the ban and announcing a year ago today (September 2018), that it was reopening its advertising doors to regulated crypto exchanges in the US and Japan the following month (October 2018).

While the ban remains largely in place - crypto-related businesses outside of the US and Japan are still unable to use Google Ads - we always knew that Google would have to review their decision at some point, especially with the cryptocurrency industry showing no sign of slowing down.

Online advertising is one of the most popular and profitable avenues of marketing around, however, we at CoinCorner - and others in the Bitcoin industry - have had to (unwillingly) embrace the challenges of the ban. While the industry has shown resilience - the Bitcoin industry has only gone from strength to strength over the last year-- it obviously impacts businesses like ourselves.

When Google initially announced the ban, we were disappointed (more than half of our monthly marketing budget was spent on Search Engine Marketing), but agreed that it was a sensible move at that point in time. Having been in the crypto industry for longer than most, we’ve seen our fair share of less “legitimate” players using Google to promote misleading products and services, which unfortunately, has only led to consumer confusion and misinformed decisions.

The good news is that the ban has helped to stop a lot of the bad guys from reaching online consumers. Without access to online advertising platforms like Google, Facebook and Twitter (the latter two announced their own ban on crypto-related advertising around the same time as Google), these pop-up outfits seem to have disappeared and with less noise, comes more of everything else.

In the last year, we’ve seen the “get rich quick” operations lose momentum and interest, which has made room for the “in it for the long haul” companies (like ourselves) to create and innovate. As a result, there have been some incredible technological advancements made in Bitcoin, which have helped strengthen the infrastructure and further secured its future.

Being based in the UK, we don’t yet have the ability to access Google’s advertising platform again. This is something that we hope to see change soon, but despite reaching out to Google for an update on a number of occasions over the last year, most recently only 2 weeks ago, we keep receiving the same message:

“There is no such update available at our end with regards to when our advertising services will be available to cryptocurrency exchanges in countries other than US and Japan.”

It’s frustrating, but unfortunately there is nothing we can do but wait for Google to continue to review their policy; we hope this will come as they grow more comfortable with cryptocurrency. In the meantime, although the reversal of the ban in the US and Japan may have seemed like a small step, it was a small step in the right direction, which gives the rest of the industry hope that attitudes towards cryptocurrencies will change in the near future.

We continue to embrace ever-changing restrictions like this, which seemingly appear to stand in the way of Bitcoin adoption. However, the industry is creative, innovative and unconventional and the genuine companies operating in it will continue to find ways to spread the word of Bitcoin and its benefits as the Future of Money.