How Facebook Handles Crypto Ads (And Why It’s Good News)
Tags: Cointraffic, Facebook Ads, Advertising, Marketing, Cryptocurrency

As Facebook sets new parameters around crypto advertising through their native advertising offering, here’s why you should be cheering instead of complaining.

Despite hearing about Facebook’s decision to partially reverse the ban on Facebook crypto advertising some months ago, we are still very much seeing the effects of this crackdown.

For those not up-to-date on this issue, the ban was originally put in place because Facebook believed too many crypto companies “were not acting in good faith” when it came to spruiking their products and services.

Obviously, consumer trust in the platform had diminished.

Facebook’s examples of the kind of ads they were no longer allowing under their new crypto social media advertising terms.

According to the social media giant, the policy was designed to “improve the integrity and security of ads — making it harder for scammers to profit from a presence on Facebook.”

A noble reason, but when the effects are felt equally by ‘good’ advertisers as well as bad, the industry as a whole suffers. Facebook understood this.

Now, the company will allow ads and related content for pre-approved advertisers but is keeping the ban on binary options (a form of trading) and initial coin offerings. While this certainly does limit the reach of specific companies and projects, here’s why we at Cointraffic think that, overall, it’s a good thing.

Control policies make everyone safer.

The social media advertising measures put in place around crypto ads help to make us all safe.

Everything has to have a level of control to it. Otherwise, the most vulnerable members of that community can find themselves taken advantage of, or harmed — and advertising is no exception to the rule.

With the new regulations in place, advertisers will have to go through an application process to run their ads, which will determine their eligibility — asking for things like licenses, company status (public or otherwise), and anything else Facebook deem appropriate to know.

This level of executive oversight allows real people, not algorithms, to use basic human common sense in the quest to keep people safe from deceptive marketers.

We begin to set the standard for expectations of quality.

Quality is an expectation, not an option, and cryptocurrency advertising guidelines help to enforce this.

According to the FTC, in the first two months of 2018 alone, consumers lost a combined $532 million to cryptocurrency-related scams, with an agency official warning that by the end of the year, this cumulative number should sit somewhere closer to $3 billion.

The cost of this on the economy, on people’s health and wellbeing, and to the industry pulse is high.

There are people’s livelihoods (not to mention jobs) at stake when a few market players don’t act ethically and aren’t pulled up on it. In short, it hurts everyone.

By following clearly defined guidelines, we begin to the set the standard for expectations of quality and everyone has to play by those rules. At the end of the day, we all get better, and the net benefit, once we’ve caught out the weeds in the community garden, is a healthier ecosystem.

We continue to evolve.

Change is inevitable, and especially in blockchain and cryptocurrency.

Rob Leathern, Product Manager Director at Facebook, said: “…we’ll listen to feedback, look at how well this policy works and continue to study this technology so that, if necessary, we can revise it over time.”

The guidelines as we know them now will not be how they’ll always be. The policy is always an iterative process, as it should be, and Facebook will continue to tweak and change to reflect changing marketplace needs.

Remember, it’s not all doom and gloom. When we bring these issues up, address them and let them shift, we create a product that services the priorities of every member of a community. Maybe that’s what the industry needed, and we’re all the better for it.