22/05/2023

Google Ads Cryptocurrency Policy: All what you need to know

Cryptocurrency advertisers haven’t had it easy. Google banned all crypto-related advertising in March 2018, meaning that SEM and PPC managers faced an uphill battle when it came to raising awareness of their products and services.

Luckily for people who wanted to run Google Ads campaigns for cryptocurrencies, Google reversed the policy five months later and allowed regulated cryptocurrency exchanges and companies that offered products and services associated with cryptocurrency mining to advertise in the US and Japan.

Google is now going one step further and relaxing its crypto services marketing policies. We’ll discuss the changes below and look at best practices for how to advertise cryptos in Google Ads.

What Do the New Regulations Mean for Cryptocurrency Marketers?

As of August 3rd 2021, Google Ads account managers for cryptocurrency wallets will now be able to run PPC ads on the platform in addition to cryptocurrency exchanges. This policy only applies to cryptocurrency wallets based in the US, although PPC managers can run Google Ads cryptos campaigns in any location across the world.

There are other caveats to this change in policy. According to Google, cryptocurrency exchanges must be duly registered with either:

FinCEN as a Money Services Business and with at least one state as a money transmitter.
A federal or state-chartered bank entity.

Companies must also make sure that they comply with any other of Google’s legal requirements as well as any additional local legislation. Crypto marketers also need to ensure their ads and landing pages comply with all Google Ads policies.

The following is still not allowed on Google Ads even with the change in Google’s policy:

Ads for initial coin offerings, DeFi trading protocols, or otherwise promoting the purchase, sale, or trade of cryptocurrencies or related products.
DEX offerings, token liquidity pools, celebrity cryptocurrency endorsements, unhosted wallets, unregulated DApps.

What Should Cryptocurrency Marketers Do Now?

Google is revoking all existing Cryptocurrency Exchange certifications, which means that even if you have been running Google Ads for a while, you must still request new certification if you want to continue to advertise on the Google Ads platform. Advertisers can request this certification using the new Google application form, which has now been published. Once you have received this certification, you are ready to start your Google Ads campaigns.

If you work in the financial services industry, you’ll appreciate just how many regulations there are and how often the laws can change. Staying compliant is difficult and not being able to advertise your crypto exchanges services in Google Ads can seriously hurt your revenue. Google Ads is an important platform for advertisers in the industry, so you need to stay up to date with current and upcoming changes in regulations.

We recognize that knowing about and understanding the latest regulations is time consuming. You have many other tasks to take care of and you never seem to have enough time to do everything. It’s important to create a framework or blueprint that helps you stay compliant with current regulations and proactively track new developments. This way you can keep your ads switched on at all times and continue to target new and existing customers.

The Google Ads blog has a wealth of information on all the latest developments, so you can read their posts to find out what is going on. At OrbitalAds we stay up to date with the latest industry developments so you don’t have to go out searching for the latest information. Our blog provides a ton of information relating to best practices for Financial Services Google Ads, as well as Google Ads processes automation.

How to Advertise Cryptos In Google Ads

Trying to do all the work staying up to date with new regulations while also manually optimizing all your ads so that they continue to perform well is tough. That’s where Google Ads optimization processes automation for cryptos comes in. There are a lot of ways that OrbitalAds can help optimize the performance of your ads from improving ROAS, to making the most of your budget through tracking the right metrics, and ensuring your ads don’t get disallowed.

1. Keyword Optimization and Negativizing Keywords

Targeting the right audience is key, which means finding the right keywords and using them in the right ad group is crucial. Your crypto exchange or wallet won’t be right for everyone. OrbitalAds’s AI, Machine Learning, and Natural Language Processing capabilities mean that all your keywords end up in the most relevant ad groups. Our platform also finds new, relevant, and popular keywords and adds them to your campaigns.

You also need to ensure you aren’t wasting your budget by targeting people who aren’t interested in your product or services. That’s why adding negative keywords can be as important as finding the right keywords. OrbitalAds automatically adds negative keywords across different ad groups when it detects they aren’t relevant.

2. Quality Score Dashboard

The cryptocurrency world is extremely competitive and the competition to get your ads in the top positions in Google’s search results is fierce. There is a lot of interest in crypto exchanges and wallets at the moment, so you need to capitalize on these opportunities by creating high quality ads that beat your competitors.

To understand how your ad is performing, you need to track your Quality Score. This score out of 10 tells you how likely your ad is to show up for your chosen keywords and determines how high the CPC will be.

OrbitalAds’ Quality Score dashboard can help you understand what you need to do to boost your score and improve the quality of your traffic. It works at campaign, ad group and keyword level and shows you the evolution of your score over time.

3. Bringing it All Together

At OrbitalAds, we not only focus on Google Ads optimization processes automation for cryptos, but we also support you in ensuring you know which regulations and legislation you need to pay attention to. As industry experts, we’re always on hand to advise and guide you about how to get the most out of your campaigns.