As of June 2018, all Cryptocurrency ads will be banned on the Google Adwords platform.

Google’s ad policy has been updated to reflect the following:

“In addition, ads for the following will no longer be allowed to serve: Binary options and synonymous products Cryptocurrencies and related content (including but not limited to initial coin offerings, cryptocurrency exchanges, cryptocurrency wallets, and cryptocurrency trading advice)”

Google has rolled out this change to combat the rise in Crypto scams that have grown in recent times with the rise in popularity of Cryptocurrencies.

Google was not the first publisher to make this move. Facebook did the same towards the beginning of the year.

What does this mean in the South African context?

Local players such as Luno will need to rely heavily on organic search (SEO) in order to reach users in the search results. At Algorithm we foresee that players such as Luno will need to invest a lot of time and effort in their organic strategies as the competition in this space is quite fierce with a number of Dot Coms owning the first page of the search results in South Africa (Google.co.za) for key terms.