- Decenter, a smart contract auditing firm, claims that Ethereum-related ads are now banned on Google
- This comes months after Google lifted its ban on all blockchain and Cryptocurrency ads on its AdWords platform
Decenter, a smart contract auditing firm, has come forward with a claim that Ethereum has been banned by Google On AdWords, its advertising platform. This comes months after Google lifted the ban on Cryptocurrency and blockchain-related ads altogether.
The official Google AdWords Twitter account responded to the tweet to clarify the issue. According to them, cryptocurrency Exchange ads that specifically target the United States or Japan have no issue but ads targeting other areas might be rejected.
Twitter drama
Decenter tweeted that when they tried setting up ads using “ethereum development services” and “ethereum security audits” keywords, they received a repeated error message.
The Google AdWords account responded to them, instructing them to look up the AdWords Terms and Conditions:
“Although we wouldn’t be able to preemptively confirm if your keyword is eligible to trigger ads, we’d recommend that you refer to the ‘Cryptocurrencies’ section of our policy on Financial products and services.”
This section is one that has been significantly changed lately. All ads relating to cryptocurrency and blockchain were initially banned, with the ban only being lifted in 2018.
The Decenter team took it a step further, reaching out to the Ethereum community on Reddit and asking them about the issue.
The Ethereum team responded, saying, “Any of the keywords that contain “ethereum” in our campaigns are no longer showing ads as of January 9th and are now reporting the following error.”
Ethereum especially targeted
Decenter further explained that the ban didn’t seem to affect all crypto-related keywords. For example, they tested with “ethereum smart contract audits” and “eos smart contract audits” and the latter was accepted for ad creation.
This incident has, once again, brought up discussion about Google’s treatment of businesses in the blockchain industry.
Blockchain is certainly popular, topping Google searches for 2018, but Google has been slow at giving blockchain businesses a chance to properly market themselves.
Some even believe that Google’s practices with regards to the blockchain industry are politically motivated.
“Google has various political and economic agendas, and they are quite willing to use their various services to promote their preferences. AdSense and Youtube are notorious for this, but there have been some incidents regarding the play store as well,” a comment on Reddit says.