Google Banning Cryptocurrency / ICO Ads is the Best Thing to Happen to Blockchain!
Earlier this year both Google and Facebook announced that they would be banning crypto advertising.
Rob Leathern, product manager at Facebook gives a pretty simple (and in my opinion fair) explanation why;
We want people to continue to discover and learn about new products and services through Facebook ads without fear of scams or deception. That said, there are many companies who are advertising binary options, ICOs and cryptocurrencies that are not currently operating in good faith.
It’s true, there is a lot of junk in this space. We have outright ponzi schemes at worst, a lot of exit scams too, then hundreds of projects raising funds in an ICO that don’t even really need a blockchain. At a glance it is hard to see who is genuine and Facebook doesn’t want to be the judge.
For the genuine blockchain startups out there it might initially look like this is a real roadblock, that it will be harder to get the word out there about your project and raise money, but nothing could be further from the truth.
The fact is that the majority of the cryptocurrency interested audience aren’t hanging out on facebook anyway, they browse specific crypto focused website and blogs..
So, It’s not the end of Blockchain Advertising
It just means you have to go direct, and what becomes immediately evident is that there already exists a large network of crypto stats and news sites and crypto focused advertising networks — with HUGE traffic:
- Coinmarketcap.com for example has more traffic than USAToday.com, FT.com and MTV.com. *going by Alexa rank
- Coindesk.com, the oldest and largest crypto news site, founded in 2013 receives around 10 million visitors per month
- Our crypto news site, InvestinBlockchain.com receives 200–300k monthly visits (and is only the 12th largest crypto blog).
- Then there are the crypto focused advertising networks, CoinAd.com (*disclaimer, I’m one of the founders), serves 1.7 to 2.5 BILLION impressions monthly, generating 700k to 2 million clicks to (mostly ICO) clients.
- And when you go direct, you realise just exactly how much google (over?)charges and takes in fees… lets have a look at these numbers and show why.
The Google Ban is good for Blockchain
1. You can get 10x better value from your $s.
Google generated $110 billion revenue in 2017 *, and 86%* of their revenue comes from advertising.
The average cost per click in Google Ads is between $1 and $2 on the search network. The average CPC on the Display Network is under $1.The most expensive keywords in Google Ads and Bing Ads cost $50 or more per click.* These are financial keywords, and I’ve heard many ico/startup blockchain CEOs tell me their google clicks costing $5–10 each.
Now this is not entirely Google’s ‘fault’. They charge around 25% fees on adwords, but the real craziness comes from big brands bidding up each other.
A spotlight was put on just how extreme and overpriced the bidding war makes ads pricing when there was controversy over extremist videos on Youtube; When McDonalds, BBC, Pepsi, Walmart and Starbucks pulled their YouTube advertising budgets, YouTubers saw their ad revenues plummet. Their earnings dropped by 90% from $1+ per thousand views to $0.10 per thousand.
Big brands were making advertising 10x more expensive, (now this is fantastic for Google, but not so great for smaller businesses and startups having to compete with McDonalds and Starbucks for advertising space).
Not only were crypto startups having to compete in this bidding war against companies with endless budgets but worse..
2. Facebook / Google Is Not Targeted for Crypto Audiences.
“For some markets, AdWords just doesn’t fit. It’s better to find an alternative that actually gels with your niche.” (John Rampton, in the article “5 reasons why you shouldn’t use adwords”)
This applies to the crypto niche more than any other — it’s just so niche and new that Google isn’t serving optimally to this audience.
This effect is compounded by Google’s “retargeting pixel”. In short, if your target audience has ever been on a mainstream brand site like McDonalds, Adidas or Starbucks, then they will have a cookie on their computer which allows their advertising departments to place ads which follow you around the internet.
This means that even when you are advertising via Google, onto a crypto blog you are competing against McDonalds and such who are retargeting to their audience and bidding against you to appear to the user browsing the crypto site still. It’s why someone can be on a crypto blog but see an advert for the exact pair of running shoes they just added to their basket on Nike.com.
In Short — The Google ban on advertising might just be the best thing that ever happened to the blockchain space to give genuine blockchain startups the chance to reach their audience at a fair market rate.
Shameless self promotion — check out our mini brochure and CoinAd.com client case studies ;) : https://docs.google.com/document/d/1VvuOj6Cz0fa2PH8ulVb0l57-YFLFLKW_rFDOAk7P2Sk/
