Facebook Allows Cryptocurrency Promotional Ads but Sets Strict Procedures

Facebook is lifting its total ban on cryptocurrency ads that was implemented in January this year. After six months of assessment,  the company chose to let some cryptocurrency ads on its platform but advertisers have to place in a request form with all their business details and the forms of cryptocurrency content to be advertised.  

Rob Leathern, Product Management Director (PMD) of Facebook, posted some updates on Tuesday to the company's forbidden financial products and services policy.

How Best Can This Policy be Refined

Facebook proclaimed in January the policy to ban ads that popularise financial goods and services which have been often associated misguiding promotional practices like cryptocurrency, binary options and ICOs. The policy will be intentionally wide as the effort to better detect misleading advertising practices.

Leathern cited that Facebook has been thoroughly learning for over the past few months, the decent way to purify this policy to permit some ads and ensuring that they are safer. Facebook will be updating its policy to admit ads that promote crypto and all related material from pre-approved advertisers though it will stay banning ads which promote ICOs and binary options.

The PMD explained that there are some limitations so some ads will be spared. The company will first listen to the feedback and get how best this policy functions and also go further to properly study this technology in order to revise the policy in the future if necessary.

"Advertisers wanting to run ads for cryptocurrency products and services must submit an application to help us assess their eligibility including any licenses they have obtained,  whether they are traded on a public stock exchange and other relevant public background on their business, " Leathern said.

Six Mandatory Questions for the Applicant

The application form named "Cryptocurrency Products and Services on Onboarding Request" comprises of six major questions.

Question one asks "why are you applying?" and gives three options for the applicant to choose from, these options are Cryptocurrency products and services,  Education on cryptocurrency and Cryptocurrency industry news. Nevertheless, the company repeated as a reminder that ICOs are forbidden under Prohibited Financial Products and Services Policy.

Question two asks if the "applicant has a Facebook Ad Account ID" if not then it's a must to create it before you continue.

Question three asks "applicant's website domain and business details" like any regulatory certification,  and whether the business is named on a stock exchange as a public company.

Question four asks "business information and address".

Question five asks for a "brief description" of cryptocurrency-related content or services or products that are intended to be promoted by the site.

The final task needs the applicant to agree with "Facebook Cryptocurrency Ads Addendum. "

The application form further requires the applicant to fully declare their domain(s) that are used in cryptocurrency-related promotion.

Not All Cryptocurrencies are Pure Evil

Kirill Kotilevskiy, CEO and Founder of SquarEx, a decentralized real estate crowd building and Square exchange ecosystem using smart-contracts, commented to Coinidol:

“The grand hype crypto has experienced had everybody lose their minds for a while. The investors and institutions got mad sponsoring the craziest never-to-happen projects, some of them actually being fraudulent or just scams with a pre-planned drop-off right after the ICO conclusion."

He continued:

"The 1st quarter of 2018 turned into a huge return-on-investment deficit on an overvalued and overhyped market. The industry just should have been calmed down a bit in terms of promo-activity, no matter how gold-bearing this was for Facebook. What Facebook most likely implies with its amended policy is, one should consider an investment opportunity good enough after a careful study, not the momentary impulse caused by wow-effect, which ICO ads were up to through all of 2017.”