Bing Ads, Microsoft's advertising service, has decided to disallow cryptocurrency advertising.
According to Melissa Alsoszatai-Petheo, Advertiser Policy Manager, the decision has been reached because cryptocurrency is not regulated and so the related products "present a possible elevated risk to our users with the potential for bad actors to participate in predatory behaviors, or otherwise scam consumers."
The change will be effective in late June/early July.
Bing Ads is a Microsoft service that provides paid advertising on the Microsoft and Yahoo! internet search engines. It was formerly known as adCenter and was renamed in 2012 following Microsoft's Acquisition of Yahoo! The Yahoo! search engine was renamed to Yahoo! Bing Network. It allows advertisers to target their campaigns according to demographic and time slot.
It made $6.97 billion in advertising revenue in 2017.
With this decision it becomes the latest domino to fall if by domino we mean 'advertising platform' and by fall we mean 'decide to ban cryptocurrency advertising'.
Facebook banned it in January of this year, saying: "We want people to continue to discover and learn about new products and services through Facebook ads without fear of scams or deception." What was truly damaging to the industry though was Google's decision to do the same a couple of months later, although it did say that companies that gain the relevant regulatory licences will be allowed to use its services again. Twitter was the next in line, leaving the industry, which exists almost completely in cyberspace, with few places to turn.
This left Microsoft as one of the few remaining floes for cryptocurrency advertisers to cling to. A Microsoft spokesperson said in March that it was evaluating its position on the matter.
