Google Ends Cryptocurrency Ad Ban For Certain Kinds of Ads (cnbc.com)

Earlier this year, Google updated its financial services-ad policies to ban any advertising about cryptocurrency-related content, including initial coin offerings (ICOs), wallets, and trading advice. Google appears to be reversing course with a new policy starting in October that will allow regulated cryptocurrency exchanges to buy ads in the U.S. and Japan. Advertising about ICOs, wallets and trading advice are reportedly still not allowed. CNBC reports: Google's updated policy applies to advertisers all over the world, though the ads can only run in the U.S. and Japan, and interested parties will need to apply for certification to serve ads in each country individually. Google's move follows Facebook, which started allowing pre-approved cryptocurrency advertisers in June. Google parent company Alphabet gets roughly 86 percent of its total revenue from advertising. The company booked more than $54 billion in ad revenue in the first half of 2018.

Comments

from the change-of-heart dept.

[rmdingler]

I'd like to enter a motion this front page story be reconsidered for placement in the it-was-only-a-matter-of-time dept.

Re:from the change-of-heart dept.

[Mathinker]

> it-was-only-a-matter-of-time dept.

Personally, I think it belongs in the dept. of it-is-only-a-matter-of-profits (or possibly it-is-only-a-matter-of-money, if you want to spin it with a double entendre).

Re:google fucking sucks

[Shikaku]

Google does suck in a lot of ways, not a lot of people are going to disagree with you. Even their open source projects are just vendor lock-in traps, you can't actually call a device "Android" and sell it without installing a number of apps including Google Play.

54 billion?!

[glitch!]

More than two decades ago, I spent time in Radio Shack. The advertising expense to sales as seven percent. Assuming this is a valid number for retail, that implies that the Google advertisers got 770 billions of sales from their 54 billion in advertising expenses. Did these sellers really get almost a trillion dollars of sales from that expense?! Just wondering.

Re:54 billion?!

[Zocalo]

Advertising RoI is a notoriously difficult things to pin down, no matter what the snake oil salespeople in ad-sales, SEO, and marketing would have you believe. For the right ad, that hits the right audience, at the right time, I have no doubt that you'd easily be able to exceed that 7% figure; the rest are far more subjective - there was a story doing the rounds recently that Google's ad-sales people know that statistically most ad-agencies - the middle-men between Google and the company trying to shift an actually product or service - will fail within a year, so just try and bleed them for as much as they can, while they last. Basically, it's an MLM model of blowing smoke and peddling snake oil all the way down, and with a failure rate like that the norm is probably indicative of an typical RoI that's better summed up as "don't bother".

There have also been several reports of quite high-profile companies that might be starting to realise that and have slashed their ad-budgets - especially for online spend - recently, usually accompanied by anecdotal evidence of near zero impact on retail turnover. YMMV though; there's a big difference between an established company/product - especially in cases of near monopolies or where the brand is synonymous with the product (Hoover vs. vacuum cleaner, for instance) and a new company trying to break into the market that currently has almost zero customer awareness they even exist, let alone why they might want to buy their products/services.

Re:54 billion?!

[rtb61]

That is a used to be figure, where due to the limited media market, you could go with saturation advertising. Flooding out all media channels and keeping your opposition out for a short time, to really pump up sales. But now, saturation is impossible, there is a veritable flood of advertising, whilst in total volume it is massive, any particular product or services, scream to buy me, are straight up drowned out by the flood.

Also as people become less used to ad, due to much ad free content being available, loud ads tend to cause offence and active product rejection. Like Youtube trying to force people to watch ads, oh yeah, that person forced to sit through the ad will consider the product, fuck no. I have never bought a forced Youtube ad product and never will, ohh yeah, I will remember those fuckers (sometimes it is better to be forgotten), have not been to Maccas for years, forced youtube ad really pissed me off at the time and just stopped going, plenty of others to choose from.

Want to kill your product with me, try to force me to watch a youtube ad, that'll do it every time.